Curbing My Enthusiasm
Project Leica M9-P is well on its way. I have to report, however, that I have not yet been able to quantify how much money I am saving at the moment. Well there is not a lot of money to save this month anyway. I am saving money right now, mostly because I have a doctor's appointment on Wednesday, and this month I had to pay last year's recalculated electric bill, which was a lot! Had I not paid that bill there would be NOK 7000 in the pot right now. But it's better to pay those bills than to delay them and then I might end up having to pay interest as well.
This is good practice though for when the real deal starts. Next month I will transfer a specified amount of my salary to a high interest savings account and just have a certain amount of money to live by for the rest of March. I am re-learning to cook my own meals (which is actually very therapeutic, and it keeps my mind sharp because I have to plan my meals every day. Right now I am using on average NOK 50-60 making meals which lasts on average a couple of days (compared to paying NOK 130 at my favorite vegetarian restaurant per visit, and I did that once a week). All my utility bills are placed on auto debit to make sure that they get first priority. What I still have not learned to curb though is my addiction to snus! This is very poor on my part. I have to quit it because it's the most expensive unnecessary expenditure I have (around NOK 80 for a small canister which lasts about 3-4 days maximum. I calculated the costs and this bad, bad habit costs me NOK 8500 a year! So I have to bite the bullet and eventually phase it out, and find ways to fight against the craving, and the withdrawal that is sure to follow when I start to deprive myself of this poison.
So the savings project is well on its way, and while we are waiting for the temperatures to climb so I can spend many hours outdoors again to take pictures, I am publishing some pictures which "didn't quite make the cut". These are the pictures I have decided to remove from the final portfolio of whatever it was I was shooting at the time.
I was actually aiming for a picture of the guy (hehe) but I ended up taking a marvelous shot of the beach front in Salou, Spain right after a rain shower and just before the sun overpowered the clouds. This gave a HDR feeling without have to post process the picture, which was pretty neat! In the end, though, this was just another picture of a beach, rather common and pretty generic. I guess this just goes to show how selective I am with my own work! Sometimes it is disheartening to end up with just a handful of good photographs out of several hundred which were taken. But a photographer friend of mine assured me that that is the norm.
Another photograph which was also taken during my vacation in Northern Spain, a view of the dug up graves of the Roman ruins in Tarragona. The site was closed during that day, so i had to squeeze in the camera amongst some fences to get this shot. The black and white effect was added to get that mysterious look, and to tame the harsh sunshine! I remember the temperature was well over 30, and the camera strap of the Pentax K-5 was starting to chafe my neck.
Well that is all the photographs I can post right now. I will need to dig deeper into my archives and hopefully I will find more hidden treasures to show you all. But then again, as I am writing this, the temperatures have considerably risen, so I hope I will be able to to out again pretty soon to take new pictures (and pictures of Spring are always lovely!).
This is good practice though for when the real deal starts. Next month I will transfer a specified amount of my salary to a high interest savings account and just have a certain amount of money to live by for the rest of March. I am re-learning to cook my own meals (which is actually very therapeutic, and it keeps my mind sharp because I have to plan my meals every day. Right now I am using on average NOK 50-60 making meals which lasts on average a couple of days (compared to paying NOK 130 at my favorite vegetarian restaurant per visit, and I did that once a week). All my utility bills are placed on auto debit to make sure that they get first priority. What I still have not learned to curb though is my addiction to snus! This is very poor on my part. I have to quit it because it's the most expensive unnecessary expenditure I have (around NOK 80 for a small canister which lasts about 3-4 days maximum. I calculated the costs and this bad, bad habit costs me NOK 8500 a year! So I have to bite the bullet and eventually phase it out, and find ways to fight against the craving, and the withdrawal that is sure to follow when I start to deprive myself of this poison.
So the savings project is well on its way, and while we are waiting for the temperatures to climb so I can spend many hours outdoors again to take pictures, I am publishing some pictures which "didn't quite make the cut". These are the pictures I have decided to remove from the final portfolio of whatever it was I was shooting at the time.
Well that is all the photographs I can post right now. I will need to dig deeper into my archives and hopefully I will find more hidden treasures to show you all. But then again, as I am writing this, the temperatures have considerably risen, so I hope I will be able to to out again pretty soon to take new pictures (and pictures of Spring are always lovely!).
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