Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Perfectionism VS Professionalism

Since I'm heading for New York City tomorrow, I've been hurrying around the last few days trying to finish up some projects. Two big ones needed to be done - finish the income taxes and get a photo submission off. The photo submission is a once a year museum contest in Ruiodoso, New Mexico. This will be the fourth year I've entered. It involves making prints, cutting foam core, cutting mats, and assembling. In other years, when I was entering a contest, I would rework my photos for each one. And at the time that was reasonable because my photoshop skills were still improving dramatically every six months. This year I've been doing a pretty good job of working the best photos shortly after I take them. I have a system that tells me whether I've sharpened (the stock agencies and some of the magazines do not want the photos sharpened). Sometimes I store it as a photoshop file - a work in progress. Sometimes I save it both as an unsharpened tiff and as a sharpened tiff. This made it easy this year. I started printing the photos last night. With a few exceptions, I just resized for my larger print size and printed. This is a step forward, because it means I am trusting that my prior work is really good enough. I was able to get the foam boards cut, the mat boards ready. While not finished, all that is lacking is permanently assembling them, something that can be done in the RV.

My taxes this year are somewhat the same way. Other years I've tried to wait until I have time to concentrate on taxes and get all the details just so. This year has been very full of events, yes, more important than taxes. Thankfully, this year's taxes are easier. I've got four of the six finished. Once again, I'm trusting that the earlier work that I did was correct the first time rather than double checking it three or four times. Now, if I could only learn to do that EARLY in the year, rather than at the last minute.

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