I should be adding to the novel, but…a blog post is about all I can manage at the moment. I took advantage of a perfect day here in Fallbrook. 74 degrees F, sunny, just enough breeze to feel good. I moved my afternoon office down to the patio of the new winery just a mile away from the house, and after a glass of wine and some photography, getting my head around the next scene on the Moon isn’t working. Pictures of my lakefront winery office to be posted later.

This is the silver lining in not going to South America this month. January in Socal can be the best weather of the year. Days like today just don’t happen elsewhere in the US. It’s 25 degrees and snowing in KY – nice in its own way, but not outdoor wine drinking weather.

I spent a great lunch with my semi-pro photographer friend (he’s actually a pro and a good one, but he makes his living via other means), and we talked through high-end audio, photography, politics, etc. It was great. He confirmed some of the things I thought I was doing wrong with the new camera, and I’m anxious to try what I learned. Getting back to some basics – shoot manual, shoot RAW or RAW+JPEG, stay in the sweet spot of shutter speeds, ISO and aperture – and learn to do that without thinking. I know I used to do that with my ancient Nikon EM, my first real camera back in 1979. But over the years I’ve forgotten those basics. All the crazy software capabilities of modern cameras are cool, but they get in the way of a focus on composition. That’s what Robert confirmed for me. When I’m worried about 77 arcane software settings and what needs to be tweaked, I’m not thinking about the shot and its subject. So throw all that shit away and get back to basics.