Tag: hobby

Budget vs. Hobbies – Finding a Balance

Life, Photography, Tools

Happy New Year all! Hope the holiday season was everything you wanted and that you received and gave everything that made your season perfect. I was actually quite ill over the holidays, struck with a seasonal flu (and maybe other bad bugs) that kept me at home for quite some time. Eventually, this becomes boring, so I turned my diminished brainpower to exploring a topic I had not explored lately: how best to balance budget and hobbies in retirement?

I actually have had a budget every year since retirement. And at the end of every year, I check it to see just how much difference it has not made to my end of year finances. I’ve decided to give it a more meaningful try for this coming year, especially since travel will be big on the agenda this year.

Budgeting has long been the mantra of financial planners who work with young investors, particularly the part about saving for retirement. But few seem to have good advice on how to manage that money after retirement. Why of course the floodgates open, no? This post is not financial advice. This post is about a few things I’ve learned about having fun responsibly in your golden years.

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Why is Astrophotography So Popular Now?

astrophotography, Expertise, My Community, Photography, Tools

If you check the sales numbers of the top camera manufacturers worldwide over the last 15 years, you will see that sales have dropped by more than 90%. The market for traditional camera sales has clearly bottomed out, with most of us relying on our cellphones now to capture those memorable daytime visual experiences.

In contrast, the market for astrophotography is exploding, particularly in the 30-40 year age groups. Inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic, sales have skyrocketed. While still technically a niche subject, the number of companies now that offer specialized astrophotography equipment, along with the number of companies that will design and build a custom home observatory for you, is growing by leaps and bounds. There are also star parties around the world each year where enthusiasts gather to share experiences and ideas. YouTube searches for astrophotography confirm the growing interest, although there is a strange unexplained dip between 2018 and 2020.

My last blog post talked about a move away from technology to more analogue options, especially for young folk. This bucks that trend bigtime. Why?

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Space: The Final Frontier (Part 2)

astrophotography, Expertise, Photography, Tools

A few days ago, I published a single image that was the result of months of elapsed time (days of actual time) and represents the most effort I have ever put into a single photographic image. The image? The Rosette Nebula, a hydrogen gas cloud in the Milky Way Galaxy, our galaxy. These gas clouds are either stellar nurseries or the remnants of stellar explosions. Either way, they populate the sky with amazingly photogenic objects.

Rosette Nebula

These gas clouds either emit or reflect light. As such, we should be able to photograph them as we would other subjects, right? While all the photographic “rules” apply about exposure, composition, white balance, sharpness and colour saturation, they are multiplied exponentially when dealing with objects that, in this case, are a whopping 5,000 light years from us in distance.

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