Greetings,

I hope this issue finds everyone happy, healthy, and surrounded by good friends and family. There is a time to sit alone with your favorite beverage and ponder the universe…or your belly button. The holidays are not that time. Be with people. The good people. Be sure that they are not lonely and gift them with your being and enjoy their company. Every moment is a once-in-a-lifetime moment. Make each worth it.

This week has been productive for me in a lot of ways. Editing was one of those. I have my new Mac Studio computer online for editing is much faster with the extra memory and M2 processor. Not that I’m ever under some deadline. I do enjoy being able to create more because it runs faster.

In this issue there are some new images of Marcela, Ariana. Elley, and Tayler. So, I guess I am getting more done because of the speed. All beautiful ladies in their own right.

I continue to see more and more AI entering the scene of editing. I saw one editing plugin yesterday that I’m sure will be popular with commercial photographers. You point it at a picture, and it comes out perfect. It makes the skin flawless, yet there is texture, highlights hair, and pretty much everything else. You can even change the background with a click. If I was being paid and had to crank through 500-1000 images a week you can bet I’d unleash the program on the images.

I’m still very happy ‘manually’ brushing and finding flaws to edit and make the picture my own creation. I got to see films go to digital, and now I’m watching digital become old school.

There are still some things that AI can’t do for a photographer. The lighting angles and poses are all still up to the humans to get right. For now. Someday there will undoubtedly be an app you can scan a room and it’ll tell you where to put the subject and what settings you should use for the camera. Heck, via Bluetooth it may set the camera for you. That all sounds as fun as watching rocks weather away.

Last weekend, a good friend from the LA area came to visit. I was showing Rebecca the CCC camp at Bonita and I was saying “We think this was used for….etc.” She asked who ‘we’ were and did I had a mouse in my pocket. At that very moment, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a mouse! Granted, it was a computer mouse that I’d decided to bring back to the valley and happened to have put it in my pocket. But what are the chances? That was funny.

Later, we visited an area full of geodes, and she’d collected a box of them. As I was helping her load up her car to head home, the discussion gravitated to some subject that was dumb. Dumb as the box of rocks I was holding. We are so easily entertained sometimes.

Happy holidays!

To be a great conversationalist, ask questions and listen. Repeat.

“Be curious, not judgemental” - Walt Whittman

And if you’d like to give me any feedback on these Museletters, feel free! I love to hear from you all! - Contact form