Last week I decided that I would take a close look at my resume, appreciate it for what it was, and then throw it in the garbage. Why? Because it just hasn’t been working.

After 4 months of seeking meaningful employment, constructing, refining and implementing my resume I have become no closer to employment than when I began.

I figured that I might as well “throw in the towel” on the conventional resume and try something new. Truth be told, do I really want to work in an organization that bases who they interview on a keyword search of resumes? Hardly.

So I spent a week thinking, planning and constructing what you see below. For some it will seem stupid, to others it will seem incomplete, as for myself, I see it as a new approach that can’t do any harm.

The single most important change I’ve made in my own working habits has been to start doing things the other way round – i.e. begin the day with creative work on my own top priorities, with the phone and email switched off. And I never schedule meetings in the morning, if there’s any way of avoiding it. This means that whatever else happens, I get my most important work done – and looking back, all of my biggest successes have been the result of making this simple change.

- Mark McGuinness

Forget the answer. Life isn’t a test. It’s a blank page waiting to be filled with the story of whatever makes us come alive. For me at least, there’s a tremendous freedom in replacing the search for meaning with a quest for interesting.

- The Art of Great Things

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity , and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.

- Seth Godin, Linchpin

Lately I have been trying to find inspiration in almost everything I do. Although I’ve been able to find a great deal of inspiration when it comes to creative ideas, I’ve found the need to dig deeper and to help myself get a better understanding of the big picture.

Since purchasing an iPad a couple of week ago I have done more reading than previously and because of this I have been exposed to some great thoughts. In addition, I have just started to read Linchpin which has provided nothing but thought provoking passages.

The quotations above are a list of items that I have recently bookmarked that have resonated with me.

I’ve been trying more and more lately to pick up my camera and get out and shoot. In the past months I’ve been occupied with other things and photography just hasn’t been in me.

I’ve recently processed some images from Canada Day and was playing around with some of the Nik Color Efex Pro styles and I think I am going to start using them more to help myself define more of a style, in terms of post-processing.

In addition, I have been playing around with creating iPad Wallpaper images from some of my photos taken over the past year and hope to formally announce the site soon, although those reading this can check it out now.

For now I leave you with some recent shots that I am happy with.

When I bought my first DSLR just over a year ago I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know what aperture, shutter speed and ISO were, let along how they worked in conjunction with each other. Now a year later I personally think that I have a 1000% better understanding of how they each work and their relationship, but without a doubt I am still very new and still learning.

Over the past year I have found myself frustrated with ISO more than anything. Don’t get me wrong, I think its great, bumping the ISO to offset shutter and aperture settings, but the aspect of high noise has gotten to me at certain times over the past year.

I have only shot with film once or twice and never paid much attention to the ISO settings of the film, and when I got into digital photography I was very naive to think that since its digital and so advanced that everything would be perfect. Boy did I quickly learn that nothing was perfect, especially ISO.

Using my first DSLR (Canon XS) I generally shot around ISO 200 as it was low noise. If I needed to I would go up to ISO 400 but I hated to as the noise was (for me) unbearable, needless to say I only ever went to ISO 800 when in desperate need and never above.

When I upgraded my camera (Canon T1i) I found that it was better at handling ISO and noise than my previous model but I still wasn’t happy. The appearance that high ISO noise gives to images has always been distracting to myself, regardless of camera, film or digital. I was just annoyed with the way the images looked and I couldn’t personally stand what ISO 800 & 1600 looked like on my camera.

I’ve contemplated the switch to Nikon as their cameras handle noise far better than Canons, but I talked myself out of that. I also tried convincing myself that buying a Canon 5D Mk 2 would solve all of my noise problems, but was it really worth $3500 CDN ?

Recently I came to the realization that there isn’t anything I can really do about noise in the long run. If you want to shoot a black cat, in a black room with no lights your image is going to be noisy, regardless of camera. Thats the truth.

Lately I’ve decided to not think about noise and just make images. I’ve set my camera to auto ISO (which thankfully never chooses to go above 1600, which is nice because 3200 is a joke) and started to concentrate on the other aspects of photography. Noise is Noise and buying different gear might solve the issue to some degree but there is always going to be times when it isn’t going to be enough.

The last few events that I have shot have been filled with grain from shooting at ISO 1600, but I’m ok with it because it allowed me to capture some great images. Truth be told, people look at the images and think they are great, they look beyond the noise (or don’t realize its there at all) and accept the images for what they are.

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