I'll start by explaining the photograph, it is the entrance to the harbour (haven in Dutch) at Scheveningen, The Hague. It has taken me what can only be described as a ridiculous amount of time to learn Port (left) and Starboard (right). Even now I laugh at myself about how very simple things can trip me up. As a geographer probably the most embarrassing thing to admit is that I still sometimes use NESW (never eat shredded wheat) when I think about east and west.

So back to the point of this post, apart from the pretty photo of a storm brewing.

All my living in the moment went straight out the window when I realised that December is here and good lord where the hell did the rest of the year go? No seriously, where the hell did the rest of the year go? I have stuff to finish and do, December is not a productive month. To many mince pies to eat and sweet tea to drink. :-)

I reflect once again on achievements made over the year, the new people I have met, reconnecting with those that I had lost touch with and personal achievements that I feel good about. It's easy to look and find the things that I feel good about, so I have been trying to deconstruct the parts of the year that I don't feel good about or that went wrong.

I was once taught to remove my emotions from criticism and to try to look at criticism objectively and rationally. It's amazing how useful this has been throughout my life. It has allowed me to think about any problems or criticism and not react "all guns blazing". It has provided a useful technique in thinking about what I could have done better and how this could have been achieved and can be avoided in the future.

In every December I look forward to the winter solstice. I have always felt that this is a much more significant day in the calendar than any other, the general thought of our planet spinning through a vast universe in almost perfect balance makes me laugh at how insignificant we are. So spare some time on the 21st December at 16:28 for the point where the day starts getting longer again.

Thanks for reading!

December rolled around just in time for the temperature plummeting. People that know me are aware of how much I like the cold and dark days of winter. It's perfect for light trails, Christmas lights and early golden hours. As demonstrated (hopefully) by the photographs at the bottom of this post. Since the Instameet I have been trying to post a new photograph everyday. It reminds me of the marathon photo days of 2013, which became very stressful towards the end of the year.

The majority of my photos get some post-processing, it is a perennial subject for me talking to other photographers. For some people post-processing detracts from the photo and think that it is 'cheating'. Other people think that it adds to the photo. I am in the latter camp, I like to think I can make the picture look more like I see it in my mind when I am taking it. I think it's good that there is discussion around these topics in photography, as there is no 'right' answer.

The photograph below uses Apple's new Depth Effect on their iPhone 7+. I was wondering if this is regarded as post-processing as the camera takes two shots at different focal lengths and mashes them together. It works quite well, although there it is no substitute for using my 50mm lens. Of course, I added a little more post-processing...

I thought I would post some of the SOOC (straight out of the camera) photographs, that have been edited and can be found on the Instagram page that I have taken from recent trips to Edinburgh.

December

December Days

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