I’m a big fan of Christmas. Not just because I take two weeks off work! I love preparing for the Christmas episode of the podcast (the version of A Christmas Carol in this year’s is getting rave reviews!), spending time at home as well as travelling through the dark to visit friends and family. This year we have added rather snazzy TARDIS and Dalek decorations to the tree. And the food! Those treats which never seem appropriate at any other time of the year are suddenly justifiable!
It’s also a time to catch up on little projects. This year I’m experimenting with a medium format camera. Even though I’ve only used a few exposures, it’s already had the effect of slowing down the process of making a photograph happen. I’m so used to the instant feedback of a digital SLR and working iteratively to get a shot right that using a camera with no review screen, no internal light meter and only a paltry twelve exposures on a roll of film has made me really make sure I get everything set up correctly before firing the shutter. Hopefully I’ll have some results to share in a few weeks.
Every year I make a Christmas donation to an open source software project or two which I’ve used in the preceding twelve months. This year I chose the OpenShot video editor. I’ve been using it to edit some video projects for the lovely Emma Lappin Flowers and I hope to be able to share them with you very soon. It’s a long way from being finished but hopefully the developers will deliver a stable, fast and feature-rich video editor for Linux.
Merry Christmas!