Note to self...

... if you're going to ride to work with your camera bag over your shoulder please ensure you have a memory card in said camera. Especially if there is going to be a Mini Clubman S in A-Team livery parked just outside your place of work (why don't Nikon dSLRs come with even just ten shots worth of onboard memory???).

Sigh.

Anyway, life keeps turning, which is a neat and seamless link into today's commentary, which may on the face of it prove unpopular. You see I'm afraid I haven't been gripped by the whole life.turns thing. Which is going to need some explanation before I'm accused of anti-blippery. I love this place. No seriously. I do. I thought Flickr was a good way to improve my photography through feedback and trying out new things, but this place really really focusses much more on producing something blipworthy.

Okay, so sometimes I'll knock something on that just explains the day, but for the most part whether it's playing with light, or trying to perfect aerial bird shots, or coming up with weird self-portraits, it's Blip that has got me doing that.

So when life.turns came along I felt a bit guilty that I wasn't really grabbed by the idea (not even after watching the online zoetrope, sorry!). Not even on a slow Blip day have I thought, "Aha, I could just do a life.turns shot." And that in turn (if you'll pardon the pun) made me think about what Blip was for me, and it's all the stuff in that paragraph just above this one, plus the social side of having met some great people over the past almost-two-years. And then I thought about the last Unstaged competition, and how I started thinking about shots for that instead of shots that I was just taking for Blip. And I remembered the annoyance (hell I'll admit to that) at not being shortlisted, wondering how 2 or 3 did manage to get shortlisted, and the pressure being off after it had all blown over and I could just get back to taking photos.

Which is why I've taken my two entries to the new Unstaged competition out. For me Blip will remain me recording my life and improving my photography. Some people will want to come along for the ride, and I'll ride along with others. It's become a deeply personal thing for me, charting some remarkable highs and lows, while at the same time a conversely social thing no longer hidden behind a veil on anonymity the more Blippers I meet. I'll come to events and meets (no, honest, seriously, I will) but truly... I'm not too fussed about offshoots.

I'm nothing if not honest. It's hardly going to make me walk away from Blip because the reasons I love it are all still there. I'm just keeping it me-simple.