We all hit it every now and then, if we are engaged in some creative endeavour: the dip. The block. The point when we think “I am bored with this, I have done it all. I cannot come up with anything new, creative or fun. I’m done, and moving on”.

Blocked? No you’re not! You are just bored. And delayed. Temporarily. Your muse will return.

So how do you deal with this in the interim?

By making it new. Get inspired! Do things like:

• Have a good night’s sleep. Or two. Start there!
• Realize you are not alone. Entire web sites are dedicated to Creative Block.
• Google photographs of the type you like. Read some of the back stories.
• Read some photography magazines.
• Learn something new. A new type of photography; a new technique.
• Read photo books.
• Carry a notepad and immediately write down what inspires you.
• Get my books from Amazon or from http://learning.photography.
• Set yourself challenges. Like “shoot only B&W for a week”, or “Focus manually for a week”, or “take only wide angle pictures for a week”.
• Join a meetup group, like Brantford Photography School.
• Contact your friends who like photography, and go for a walk around town, do some street photography.
• Do macro photography indoors. Do whatever photography you have not done.
• Binge Watch Netflix for an entire weekend—then get on with it.

There are many ways you can re-kindle your enthusiasm. Look for the ones that resonate for you, and, as said: get on with it. There’s lots to do.

There’s been 12 billion years before you when you were not here, and before our universe collapses or freezes, there’ll be another 12 billion years—you and I are just here for a few decades. Enjoy them.

It’s even worse than I thought. It appears that Adobe deliberately caused the “Lightroom [etc] will not start” issue!

This apparently from Adobe:

So Adobe installer screws up the folder owner/rights; then Adobe causes their apps to refuse to start when it detects the issue. And they give no information: the fix (below) is out there, but you have to Google to find it.

Absurd that Adobe can do this: stop people’s business cold, deliberately. A bug is inevitable and forgivable, but a deliberate decision to not allow the app to start when they detect it, is unforgivable.

Almost enough to give mega-corporations a bad name.

Oh wait.

An advanced computing tip today on Speedlighter. This is an extended version of a previous post.

Have a Mac or UNIX-like computer? Then you can use a simple little command to synchronise disks. Let me explain.

I have two hard disks next to the Mac. Two 6TB disks (I recently upgraded them).  I work on one: all my images and Lightroom files and office admin files live there. Then I have the other as a backup disk.

Whenever I work, as soon as I am done on one and am sure it’s all good, I run the following command on my mac:

I.e. the following is the actual commands; the lines above preceded by # are just comments.

rsync -a –verbose –progress –stats –delete /Volumes/MVW-3TB-1/Lightroom/ /Volumes/MVW-3TB-2/Lightroom/

rsync -a –verbose –progress –stats –delete /Volumes/MVW-3TB-1/MVW-Docs/ /Volumes/MVW-3TB-2/MVW-Docs/

rsync -a –verbose –progress –stats –delete /Volumes/MVW-3TB-1/Photos/ /Volumes/MVW-3TB-2/Photos/

So if your disks are called “Photodisk1” and “Photodisk2”, for example, and your folders are called “Photos” and “Lightroom”,  then you would make it:

rsync -a –verbose –progress –stats –delete /Volumes/Photodisk1/Photos/ /Volumes/Photodisk2/Photos/

rsync -a –verbose –progress –stats –delete /Volumes/Photodisk1/Lightroom/ /Volumes/Photodisk2/Lightroom/

(Each command is all on one lline; i.e. your file has two lines of text)

The rsync command intelligently compares the two disks and adds anything to disk 2 that was added to, or changed on, disk 1, while deleting anything from disk 2 that was deleted on disk 1. A perfect and simple backup in seconds (the first time can take a day of course, depending on how full your first disk is).

Using the nano text editor, I put these commands in a little text file called “syncdisks”

nano syncdisks

…and after I save that file, I make it executable using the chmod command:

chmod 755 ./syncdisks

I then call that file by typing

.syncdisks

(with the period) every time I want to run it.

I could automate further (drag it to the desktop so you can simply click on it) but as it is this is good for me – and it shows the power of the command line, doesn’t it?

(If this was all a bit techie for you, ignore this post and move on. You can always call me to come and so it all for you. A few hours on location consulting and you have everything organized, installed, and working perfectly)

it was judgment day today. But fortunately a benign one. The Latow photography guild in Burlington held a photo contest with a South African photo club. 60 photos, 30 from each club, were to be judged. I was one of the three judges, and had a great time tonight. I saw excellent, excellent work.

(Photo: Paul Sparrow/Latow)

And I observed a few interesting things.

First, that the status of work was incredibly high. Some beautiful, beautiful work. Mostly technically perfect.

Second, that the standard of Photoshop/Lightroom work in Burlington was very high. Higher than that in South Africa.

Third, that my judgment and that of the two other judges, highly experienced professionals, wee very very similar. Our grades were usually identical as far as I could see.

And fourth, and most interesting, was that whenever the picture was not perfect and could have been taken to the next level, it was usually a case of the photographer letting himself or herself off easily.  We all have a tendency to do this. The “yes but” phenomenon. Yes, but there wasn’t enough light. Yes, but I didn’t have enough time. Yes, but there were no clouds. Yes, but that car was in the background.

You must not do that. No one is  interested in the excuses. The only thing that matters is the end result. The photo. Nothing else matters. If there are no clouds in the sky, come back on a day when they are there. If there is not that of light, come back when the light is better!

This was your conscience speaking. Now, a beer and bed.