Recently there has been a shift in my lifestyle as a result of demand from my IT consultancy business. This has made it increasingly difficult to find sufficient time to pursue my own photographic ambitions. The result, I have scaled back the monthly newsletter to quarterly, at least for the time being and I am spending less time writing about photography.

I thought this together with a few other changes would give me the time I needed but I have unfortunately now incurred a shoulder injury which is making it extremely painful to use a mouse/graphics tablet and also hold a camera to my eye for more than a few seconds. The result; I have carried on taking photographs but not as often and I have also not spent much time in front of the computer over the past month.

The other night I decided to edit some images to prepare them for stock library submission despite being in pain from my shoulder. I was shocked however to find that I just didn't have the feel for the images I was editing and my Photoshop performance seemed to have dipped. On top of this I was just slow.

I am taking a lesson from this that in order to remain "on top of my game” I need to practice (or train) regularly. I suppose it's just like in sport, if you want to continue to perform at a level beyond beginner you need to continue to train regularly or our performance dips.

If you are wondering about the image, I shot this today. The snow had come down overnight and I couldn't get the car out this morning. Fortunately I live reasonably close to this location so we went for a walk. By the time we reached Doverstone Reservoir the cloud and mist had started to close in and I was able to capture this image.