Some of the 4x5s that need to be sleeved

Winter break is supposed to be a time of relaxation. However, there is always work to be done. For me, I have a ton of shooting to do. It actually feels like school never stopped.

One of the things I had to do was to organize my entire first semester. Sometimes during the semester, things get so backed up that you feel like you have no time to do anything. Because of this, my office/studio area grew increasingly messy and disorganized. By the end of the semester, it was basically one big pile of school materials.

The piles are gone!

So even though I still feel like I have a lot of shooting to do during this down-time, I took the week of Christmas (a week where no one wants to model for you) and dug into my office area. I ordered a number of negative sleeves, cases, and a new hard drive for my computer (I had run out of digital storage space during the semester), and I decided to update the software on my computer so that I could actually work on it again.

All the film from the semester.

Everything arrived just after Christmas, and I got to work. There were over 700 4×5 negatives from the semester that all needed to be sorted, scanned, and sleeved. This alone took days. The other task that took hours was moving all of the digital imagery that had come from the semester onto my new drive. There was 200gb of scans and composites. (I only wish I had a Thunderbolt plug.)

And now, everything is in it’s place, and things feel so much better. It makes me feel like I can breath again. But most of all, it makes me feel better about getting back to shooting, because I don’t have to think about the mess back home.