A quick update with two main pieces of news after a long time of blog-silence.  I've got hired as a User Experience Designer, and have finished processing my 6,000+ honeymoon photos.

Getting Hired as a UX Designer

This requires a post in its own right, maybe even more than one, but my broad plan of a career change has worked, which is thrilling and just ... it's great when a plan comes together:

• a demanding, repetitive 'Groundhog Day' of a job that ultimately didn't satisfy
• eyes were opened to the field of user experience design, which became infinitely more interesting to me than my actual job
• a risky decision to leave my lucrative job
  • (this actually came at a natural break in my life anyway: I got married, went on a long honeymoon [see below] and re-evaluated the work/life balance I wanted)
• a risky cost of a retraining course (General Assembly's User Experience part-time course)
• a rush to get an online portfolio and wesbite set-up, tested and revised
• job applications (lots), rejections (lots) and interviews (two)
• a callback from one of the interviews - success!

On reflection I would say I engaged with my career change seriously and researched methodology properly, which is why I think I succeeded.  My two main takeaway points for giving advice would be:

1. An online portfolio on your own domain/website
2. Interviews are a lot like first dates - it's not purely your fault/problem if it doesn't go well.

I will definitely post more about this in the future - consider this a teaser trailer.

Processing my Honeymoon Photos

I returned from my (rather long) honeymoon with over 6,000 raw photographs.  I didn't delete any photos on the go, and I was rather snap happy, so aside from just cutting that number of photos down I also consider the processing part of photography really important.

To sum what I call 'processing' photos:

• Having a natural break between capturing and looking at your photos
• Making initial selects (i.e. deleting the junk)
• Grouping and cataloguing what's left
• Processing/developing the images
  • I vehemently refute the claim that processing photos is 'cheating' and 'not proper photography'.  I will probably write a post about this in more detail at some stage.  But in sum, no digital photo today is viewed without it being processed in some way.
• Final selects of what's actually necessary from the resulting collection
• Exporting, sharing, getting feedback, ideas for the future

All this is of-course time and labour intensive, but it's something I enjoy.

The process has left me with 1,183 photos (but even lots of these are multiples of the same subject) which you can view across the three locations I spent my honeymoon in:

First there was a brief stay in Zanzibar:

A Zanzibar embrace

The album is here: https://goo.gl/photos/GqRcZCU5BRgBT6dp8

Then a briefer stay in the little known Comoros Islands:

which you can see here: https://goo.gl/photos/KJ4dLejc4Ane5FVRA

Before the meat of the honeymoon, a 6-week tour through Madagascar:

Photos from which you can view here: https://goo.gl/photos/CctDs5zcdowSLMCa6

I learnt an awful lot about my own photography while out there, both technique but also equipment (I think I've reached the limits of my obsolete Lumix GF2 model), and finally processing (I've finally nailed the 'faded film' processing look that is in vogue at the moment, this page really helped.)

I will probably post more about this soon too.

Until then, that's all for now.