Holy shit, I actually found them.

I had to run a virtual machine with Windows XP, and use recovery software to copy them off of long-formatted Zip Disks, but I found them: the first digital photos I ever took. Spoiler alert: they're about the size of postage stamps.

There's something incongruous about being on a beach and needing a sweatshirt. I probably feel that way because I'm from New Jersey. We only go to the beach when it's warm. For a lot of people from the Garden State, the beach is a destination to get quite drunk, very tan (in my case, horribly burnt), and little else.  Go to the beach on the offseason though, and your curiosity is rewarded. Seeing the shoreline in the off-season is an awesome sight to behold. Without the hordes of blankets and volleyball games to dodge, you can really appreciate a genuine walk on the beach.

I'll never divulge how many hours I've sunk into playing Rockstar Games' seminal video game, Grand Theft Auto V. It'd be too embarrassing. I admit, there are a few positive takeaways; for one, it's the most gorgeous video game environment ever, and it's easy to get lost by simply wandering around. It's a lampooning, tongue-in-cheek take of modern Los Angeles and the surrounding mountains and desert, but despite the obvious satire, it's utterly convincing as a living, breathing world. 

Luckily for me, there's an in-game camera!

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.

I guess it's the ocean that brings out the photographer in me. Or maybe it's the break from Reddit and the Internet at large. Whatever it was, I was more than eager to explore an oft-visited area of the country -- Mystic, Connecticut and the surrounding areas -- armed with cameras. Specifically, I came out swinging with my Fujifilm X100s, Lee ND filters, iPhone 6 Plus, and my new 85mm f1.8 for the Nikon.

It finally began to feel like autumn these past few weeks in New Jersey. I had a few pumpkin beers, ate some apples, started following football (for four days) -- most importantly, though, I managed to get some neat long exposures at Merrill Creek Reservoir, just near the border with Pennsylvania.

Morning hikes are my favorite of all. Probably because I'm never awake early enough to enjoy them! I finally shook off the webs of sleep to join my friend Nate this morning for a hike around Split Rock Reservoir, a sprawling lake just a few miles off of the local interstate. 

I finally got around to exploring Greenwood Gardens, a local garden preserve that's been in my town for decades. It's hidden away inside Old Short Hills Park, and I only recently realized it was there in the first place!

The challenge that film photography poses is still fun to this day, albeit in a different form -- taking your oh-so-convenient digital camera and limiting yourself as you would if you had a single roll of film, and no way to check your work. It's 36 exposures or less, at a fixed ISO, and making these images as manually as you possibly can. Through the pain of restriction, the intent is that you'll spend more time thinking about what you're about to shoot, rather than firing your camera from the hip and hoping something comes of it.