After several months of (part-time) job as a photographer -- shooting everything from editorial to sports -- I can finally say with certainty that I want to continue in that direction . The only downside of that job is that it does not stimulate my brain whatsoever. And my brain likes stimulation So, since I will have to have some other source of income at first anyway, I will do my best to get into grad school etc. I wanna do some research in Art History .

What I really love about this job is the state of trance that I enter while shooting sports or editing pictures at home. This feeling is awesome . I become completely absorbed by the process, and if the lighting conditions are adequate, I feel like could go on forever. Unfortunately, my camera does not offer the best ISO performance, and I don't have the fastest lens in terms of focusing speed, which was never a problem before, but became crucial for my assignments . I often shoot at night at poorly lit stadiums (sometimes during rain), or indoors. Shooting under certain particularly difficult lighting conditions made some assignments a nightmare and disappointment upon editing . Most lighting conditions are adequate to make portraits, but challenging for making good action shots . When I had a chance to shoot games during the day, on a nice sunny day, there was no problem with capturing the moment. Clearly, I need something better than my D60 . I am thinking about the D7000 for now, which also has video, and we will see for later... Enough bitching about photo gear. Maybe a birthday gift would solve all my problems...

I must say that I've learned a lot this semester, not only at my job, but, of course, through lectures. The painting class addressed color theory in some depth, which significantly influenced my photography. I think that if photography is the medium of light, painting is the medium of color. This semester and for the near future, my main goal is to achieve odd color combinations in photography, to make my photography be about colors. This is challenging because prints looks different from what's on the screen, and colors may vary from one screen to another, making prints the only reliable absolute. It is difficult to adjust one's vision to the gap between screen and paper, but it is doable. Luckily we have a pro printer to experiment with for our photography lectures.

New Year resolution: always take one full day off per week. No emails, no work, no study - just relax for 24 hours. As experience showed, the world goes on perfectly without me running around