“Our power is never about how pretty we are. Our power is about how we live our lives. Start living it.” Cheryl Strayed, interviewed by Lisa Congdon in A Glorious Freedom.

This grabbed me. So I spent the last 2 weekends investing my spare time in working on art. What does that even look like? For Saturday, October 7, 2017, it looked like this:

1. Removed old portfolios from view on Behance. – 10 minutes
2. Searched for and finally found the color negative of an image that Mom had asked for. I went through 8 completely full negative binders, some more than once hunting for this image. Finally found it in 1994.  – 1 hour
3. Watched the layers basics tutorial for Photoshop on Adobe. – 20 minutes
4. Scanned the image I found, Paul on the PCT trail – 15 minutes
5. Ran into tonal range issues with the image so I worked on it in Photomatix 5.0 but that wasn’t enough. Found out there was a version 6 available and downloaded the free upgrade. 10 minutes
6. Edited the image on PCT in Photomatix and combined 2 versions in Photoshop. – 10 minutes
7. Ordered 10 prints of the final version printed on Moab Bright from Giclee Today. Not sure that was the right decision. Maybe should have ordered one to test. But the shipping is killer. $7 minimum!  – 40 minutes
8. Added the image to those available for sale on Red Bubble – 5 minutes
9. Revised file from sRGB to Adobe RGB color profile in the final file and asked Giclee Today if it was possible to replace. 5 minutes
10. Wrote this blog entry. Including thinking time in the car, maybe 30 minutes.

On the whole, a good investment of about 3 hours and 30 minutes of time on a Saturday.