Vagabond Life in 2020

Posted on by Annie

Where have I been, you might be wondering? A full-time traveler in time of pandemic is not the role to be playing, as it turns out. Four years ago, when I was getting ready to becoming a full-time vagabond, I worried about a broken leg, a blown tire, a stolen whatever. Never in a million years did “pandemic” show up on the list. But here we are… and it’s been an interesting four months dealing with life taking a hard left turn. I arrived in Gainesville, Florida on Feb 27th, thinking I would buy the Ridgeline, get the Outback fixed…

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52 Frames: Background

Posted on by Annie

I’ll admit right off that this wasn’t one of my favorite challenges from 52 Frames so far this year. I just didn’t “get it.” You were supposed to create a cool background for your subject. I’m not much for studio shoots, so I went with the idea of nature providing the best backgrounds. I went out to Sweetwater Wetlands Park here in Gainesville, aiming to see what I could do with the plethora of water lilies that are currently in bloom. The weather cooperated and for two mornings last week, it was actually below 70F at 8AM, so I had…

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Standing Up

Posted on by Annie

In my last job, one of the more challenging projects I managed was upgrading a lot of really old hardware. I needed specs of the old hardware and the new and how the one set mapped to the other. Someone told me to go talk to a woman in AWS who had just stood up three data centers in Asia, so I wrote her an email and asked for her help. I was going to be in DC in a few weeks, where she was based, so we agreed to meet. She showed up for the meeting impeccably dressed, while…

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52 Frames: Symmetry

Posted on by Annie

Two weeks ago, the challenge was Symmetry, which definitely opened up a lot of possibilities as I was walking around town here in Gainesville. I liked this shot I took at Depot Park, but the reflection was a bit muddled by wind. I went back twice later in the week, and there even more wind on the water, so I gave up on this subject for the challenge. On the way to the park, I passed by the GRU plant, our local utility, and the cover photo is the massive water cooler in fierce motion. Weird subject, but I really…

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Magnolias in Bloom

Posted on by Annie

Last week’s 52 Frames challenge was “Roll of Film” or something like that, harkening back to the days when I had a Minolta camera, scraped to buy rolls of Kodachrome film, and then scraped more money together to develop that roll and see what turned out OK. The time between taking the shot and seeing how it came out could be anywhere from a few days to a month or more, depending on the state of my finances and where I sent the roll to be developed. Mail order was cheaper, even though took longer, so most of the time,…

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