In Ireland, it’s April, and with it comes showers, flowers, leaves, bright sunshine, serene foggy mornings and the promise of summer just ahead. Morning walks out to Salthill and up as far as Dangan with my camera in hand and snapping away greedily. Happy days.

Come April in Las Vegas and I find that I’ve barely shot anything in three or four months, beyond a few Clanton gatherings. Even at those I’ve anaemic at best. Ten photos here, fifteen there. Nothing inspiring.

Why?

Boredom, lack of interest, lack of time and the feeling that it’s become a chore. Family events are for me the worst, no offence to you or yours, Mariah. I’m expected to get an excellently lit photo in bad lighting and great poses out of people who barely listen to me at the best of time. I don’t even have a flashgun, because I managed to break it and leave it sitting in limbo at Sigma.

I don’t have the opportunity to go out and go walkabout around my neighbourhood with my camera, no matter that there’s no end of beautifully decaying old buildings in the area.

Snapping Caira and the pets is only enjoyable to a point, and so here I am.

Bitch, whine, etcetera.

I know I need to pick up my interest again, so I’ve decided to take part in Solo Photo Book Month. I have the writing ability, I have the typesetting skills to put it into a book and I have the photographic know-how.

Beginning with tomorrow, I will try and get one post-worthy photo during a weekday and two on weekend days.

Meriadoc

Meriadoc one of two identical cats (the other being Peregrin) who we got through a shelter a few weeks back. I have absolutely no idea about his breed; he carries traits from several breeds, so he’s a bit of a mongrel. I think he might be distantly related to Princess because they both have long-haired poofy tails, compared to their shorter body coat. Princess’ fur is definitely much softer than Merry’s, and she also has much more of a mane, but on the other hand Merry has the pointed ear tips.

For now I’ll lump him in as a domestic medium hair with dilute Snowshoe traits.

Personality-wise, Merry fits him perfectly. He’s incredibly sociable and will even stand-to and let Caira give him attention. For sure, he’s an awesome cat.

Mariah took this over the Easter holiday and I processed it, which is a fair sign of how active I’ve been with photography in the past few weeks. I even went so far as to offer Mariah my camera, although I got some biting comments for my troubles, to the effect that I’m using it as a cover to get a new camera. The offer was genuine; although I’d love to go out and get a 40D, I haven’t had any opportunity to shoot any of the things that I find interesting, to the point that getting new kit has actually dropped down the list a few points.

I’m constantly tinkering with my website and adding new functions, or removing unused functions, as needed. My newest addition is Shadowbox, which is replacing Lightbox.

A shocking change, I know.

The upswing of the change is that Shadowbox scales the image to fit the browser windows, which gives me the ability to Display Images as God Intended, which is a feature that Lightbox lacked. Behold:

/glee