I don't like malls. Even having one within walking distance of my house isn't very appealing. I don't like parking at them, I don't like dodging the bumbling people, and I don't the constant sickly-sweet smell of perfume. Still, though, it's hard to ignore their appeal -- if you're going to max out your credit card, why not do it in one place, where other people are doing the same thing? The one time I begin to enjoy them, though, is when all the other people leave. If you look up for a few seconds, it's easy to see that we've built rather impressive-looking canyons made out of marble, glass and boutique pen stores.

Ever since the #tbt hashtag came around, Thursdays have been nostalgic for me. I suppose it's no surprise, then, that I dedicate the extremely late Week 5 project to scanning in some old photos! "Scanning", in this sense, means using a DSLR, a macro lens, and a light table to accurately create digital negatives of old 35mm photos. They aren't perfect, and I don't have many shots to speak of (yet), but I learned a lot.

I also learned that, in the year 2000, I was not a very good photographer.

I woke with a start over the weekend, realizing just how behind I was on my 52 Week Project. Seconds later, I remembered that my GoPro was eligible for a software update that enabled 240 frame-per-second slow motion video. I then forgot about all of that, ate breakfast, and remembered it again. That's when I decided to make a little compilation of iPhone 6+ slow motion clips that I've taken over the past few months, combined with whatever video ideas I came up with on-the-fly for the GoPro.

What follows is something that went a little off the rails.

So, yeah -- it's WAY beyond the third week in January, and I'm starting off with a really confusing title. You can thank a stomach flu from last week and a slightly complicated photographic concept for that. So what the hell, exactly, is a high speed strobe portrait? It's not really quite as exciting as it sounds, at least in this context; to explain it, I need to get a little technical. Bear with me. 

So, I bought a lightsaber.

It doesn't really hurt anyone, it doesn't get hot, and it doesn't degrade in color from red to pink over the years. No, this lightsaber is singular in purpose -- it's daylight in a can. Specifically, it's a ton of daylight-balanced LEDs inside a tube, and it's awesome. It's the Westcott Ice Light.

For the uninitiated, some photographers choose to take on the task of the "365 project" - one photograph for every day of the year.

I've tried it twice, and failed within a week each time.

The excuses ranged from "not enough time", to "I forgot", to "I'm not in the mood today". So instead of repeating and failing the process a third time, I'm changing it up. In addition to whatever projects I take on this year, I'll aim to have 52 separate ones -- one per week -- in which I try out something new or try something I'm familiar with.