Hey y'all! Hope you're having a great week! Me? Okay all things considered . It's been unseasonably cold here in the south this year. We've had an Ice Storm and a pretty good Snow Storm along with frigid temps. This current weather pattern has lasted over a month keeping most folks trapped inside. Photography outside has been limited because of the weather. Well at least for me it has. So I've been stuck inside trying to stay warm and listening to my heating system run non stop for over a month trying to keep up. My camera club "GAPC" (Goldsboro Area Photography Club) had to reschedule a meeting due to weather and then the date that we had rescheduled to had bad weather also so we had to have our meeting via Zoom. That kind of sucked because I was giving a presentation and I would much rather do that in person than over the internet. We had a workshop planned that we also had to reschedule and then on the reschedule date the roads on the wildlife preserve we were going to were closed due to bad weather. I was recently talking to one of our members and he was telling me about his "cabin fever" and really I thought it was just me but it wasn't it was him too and he had talked to another member with the same conclusion all this bad cold grey weather has gotten to us. So what can we do? Well there are some indoor photography things you can do to keep you from going crazy. Here is a link to a blog I did on some stuff to do also that you can check out Photography when you can't get out

Indoor Photography: Doing indoor "Table Top" photography is where I really started my digital IMG_1118 photography journey. Finding stuff to shoot in your house can be very fun and interesting. Learning to use lights on smaller subjects will help you in lighting people for portraits. Which you can also do indoors. What about food photography. When it's cold nothing better than a nice bowl of chili. You could photograph that or whatever you're cooking to keep you nice and warm. What about digitizing all of those old photo's that you have stored in shoe boxes? That is a great project also to do. 

Education: Learning more about your camera. Dive into the menus and learn how to operate your camera will help you when you can get out and shoot. You won't have to fumble around looking for the setting to use. You can do it while you're on the couch watching TV with the camera in your hand going through settings and menus. There are all kinds of online education from Free on YouTube to paid services like Kelby One. Educating yourself will not only make good use of your time but will also make you a better photographer.

Plan for the upcoming year: Planning photography outings and trips are a great way to use the time you have in the house. Where do you want to go what do you want to see. How will I get there. Using the internet is a great thing to help research future trips. I've just started using a AI "Chat GPT" to help with itineraries and where to stay. And I must say it works out great. I plan on some trips this year with "MAV" (Max's Adventure Van) this year and already have a couple of trips planned. But first I have to finish converting it from a  cargo van to a Camper Van. Stupid weather is holding me back on this front.  But every day I get some good weather I work on it.

So as you can see there are lots of photography related stuff you can do while you are cooped up because of bad weather. Don't let the cabin fever get you down use the down time as an opportunity to get some stuff done. Well that's it for this week. If you can, Get out and Shoot! And have a great week.

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link