chrisdenbow.website Posts
September 27, 2026 / / Journal

Lightroom. Again.

I know what you are thinking, and you’re right. I’ve oscillated on using Adobe for years. Back and forth On/Off. Shut up.

For years, I kept trying to get away from Adobe. The subscription annoyed me. Creative Cloud annoyed me. Lightroom felt bloated, and I kept looking for smaller, simpler tools that would let me concentrate on photography instead of managing software.

So I wandered. I tried other workflows, leaned heavily into mobile photography and convinced myself I really didn’t need Adobe anymore. And now, somewhat annoyingly, I’m finding Adobe again.

Lightroom has quietly become useful to me in ways I’d forgotten. I have decades of photographs (64K and rising!) to organize, rediscover and actually do something with. Search, metadata, cataloging and editing all living in the same ecosystem suddenly makes considerably more sense than my collection of clever little workarounds. Turns out I needed those tools.

So after years of trying to give Adobe the finger, I appear to be slowly lowering it.
September 27, 2026 / / Geodenbow

Ground Control Points

For years I have wandered, noticed the unusual, followed strange trails and wished I had written down what I found along the way. I can’t recover those lost opportunities but I can start leaving a trail from here.

Today I discovered something new to me: a ground control point, used for aerial survey control and photogrammetry that are tied into the I-10, White Oak Bayou bridge project for TxDOT. Actually, I found two of them one mile apart from each other.

GCP23N and GCP18

I’ve discovered a rabbit hole of new geodata to explore.
September 27, 2026 / / Journal

Field Notes 001: Origin

Spent the evening performing archaeological excavations from my old notes. I started these journals almost exactly ten years ago on 2016-09-14. Inconsistent, but available for me to time travel backwards.

Features include misadventures, shenanigans, hikery, fuckery and so much more along the way.
September 27, 2026 / / Journal

My Multicursal Mind

For most of my life, I thought my mind worked in a straight line with one obvious direction. Lately I’m seeing a lot more options than I ever realized were there. My thinking feels more like a maze now, but also branches in different directions. It makes me wonder if I’m supposed to check every path, even the ridiculous ones. Now that I see all these possibilities, am I expected to explore them all? I don’t know. And that not knowing is confusing.

That quote was from one of my previous posts.

For years I have been fascinated with intellectually chasing a muse, chasing rabbits, going down rabbit holes, through wormholes, round and round a maze and all of it leads me exactly nowhere. So why? That self-quote maps me uncomfortably well.

For a long time, much of my life seems to have been unicursal.1 There was a route that I followed specifically. Work, responsibility, relationship, home, obligations. Even creatively, I built systems around the work: websites, software, archives, workflows, gear, and organizational structures. The path might change occasionally, but there was still supposed to be a correct path. Last year has blown a hole through that idea.

The relationship ended. I moved. I am redefining and rebuilding what home means. I’m reconsidering health, photography, writing, spirituality, how I spend my time, even what deserves my attention. Meanwhile I’ve hit 25 years of digital photography and am staring backwards at tens of thousands of photographs while simultaneously asking what the next 25 years of photography should look like.

That’s multicursal.2 I keep wandering into a maze of the marginally possible.

My Hipstamatic photo archive is a good example. On paper, they’re (800+) abstract photos I’ve accumulated over the years. The obvious, unicursal response would be: organize them, pick the best ones, and make a photo book and/or zine out of them.

Instead, I’ve started asking stranger questions.

What if they’re abstract artifacts rather than conventional photographs? What if the book is square because the images are square? What if photographs receive tiny fictional stories? What if another collection becomes a zine resembling an old CD insert? What if the physical zine points through a QR code to music? What if the archive isn’t simply documenting my past but becomes raw material for entirely new work?

That’s multicursal thinking on a small scale. Wait until I get going.

The Explore More book has the same DNA. Geodetic markers lead to waymarking. A mural leads to questions of hidden meanings and ownership. Stickers become cultural graffiti. Neon becomes preservation of the past. An unexplained number tiled on a bridge sends me out looking for the system that produced it. I am not interested in arriving at the famous thing and photographing it beautifully. I am interested in what happens when I notice something that I am not supposed to find interesting.

That may actually be the connecting bridge I’ve been trying to identify across my photography and writing. I follow marginal possibilities.

It’s A Trap

Once I realize multiple paths exist, I wonder whether I am obligated to examine all of them.

There’s your rabbit trap, Chris. I’ll explain more on rabbits later.

I do this constantly with any creative work. Once I see twelve possible manifestations of an idea, my instinct is to explore eleven and invent three more before bedtime. Website or book? Lightroom Classic or cloud? Photo book or zine? Fiction? Hidden messages? Maybe a CD? And suddenly the original idea has acquired massive real estate in my head with indoor plumbing and it’s own zip code.

The possibilities become an obligation. The discovery of multicursal paths shouldn’t require an obligation to go explore any or all of those paths. I’ve spent decades building enough experience that I can now see branches that I couldn’t see at fourteen, thirty or forty. Some will terminate immediately. Some deserve twenty minutes. A few deserve years. I don’t have to know which category a path belongs to before entering it.

I’m going to try and stick with a new motto, hell, I might even learn to apply it one day.

Think Multicursally. Act Unicursally.

I have spent days comprehending and connecting thoughts from multiple sources so that’ll be the next post.

  1. Being composed entirely of a single continuous path or line. ↩︎
  2. Refers to systems or structures with multiple routes ↩︎
September 27, 2026 / / Journal

iReader

My Kindle Paperwhite e-reader didn’t die. The hardware still worked. What failed was Amazon’s willingness to support it. When I discovered that my perfectly functional Kindle had reached the end of Amazon’s support, the solution offered to me was predictable: buy another Kindle. As consolation, Amazon offered me a modest discount toward a replacement. How generous!

Their lack of support for a functioning device, planned obsolescence and greed was telling.

I initially went along with it. I ordered a new Kindle. It arrived, I set it up, and for a little while everything was back to normal. New Kindle, same library, problem solved.

Except the whole thing pissed me off. I hadn’t replaced a broken device. I’d replaced a device because the company behind it had decided its useful life was over. Those are very different things.

The Kindle could still display books perfectly well. Its screen hadn’t suddenly become obsolete. The battery hadn’t exploded. I hadn’t dropped it into a bathtub. Amazon simply stopped supporting a device that otherwise continued doing the job I bought it to do. Then I started looking at the new Kindle sitting beside my iPad and iPhone. What exactly had I just paid for?

Both devices already run the Kindle app. Both give me access to the books I’ve purchased from Amazon. I also have Apple Books available on both. My phone is nearly always with me, and my iPad gives me a larger, excellent screen when I want to settle in and read.

I don’t need a new Kindle. More importantly, I didn’t particularly feel like rewarding Amazon for creating the circumstances that convinced me I needed one.

So I am returning it.

Welcome to iReading.

Instead of owning a dedicated e-reader, I’m reading on the devices I already own: iPhone and iPad, with Kindle and Apple Books handling the library. I can borrow and read Kindle books. I can use Apple Books. The device is mine. Maybe I’ll eventually miss e-ink enough to reconsider. I’m not declaring dedicated e-readers dead (how many times have I changed my mind?)

Amazon offered me a discount on another Kindle but I took a bigger discount. I am returning the new one and spend nothing more.

I still have my Kobo reader just in case. I’ll just dust it off when and if it is necessary.

September 7, 2026 / / Photography

Two New Cases

While strolling around various towns this Labor Day weekend I was thinking I needed a better setup for the iPhone. After research I came across a master grip system that attaches to the phone using MagSafe attachments. The system comes with a phone case, master grip with shutter button, zoom in/out and a function button to switch from photo to video. Another magnet on the front allows for the ring lamp and mirror for better portraits.

Images taken with the new Leica, which I am still sorting out the focusing capabilities.

Because Amazon won’t leave you alone, they threw in another suggestion: a dive case for my iPhone. Well, as one who loves the water be it chlorinated or salted, I thought this was a good idea. How many times could I have used this in the past and didn’t have it?

Rated for a depth of 65′ which is perfect because anything lower, I am not snorkeling, I’ll be diving with an aqualung.

I also grabbed a MagSafe battery pack for the iPhone, an SD to USB-C reader to connect the Leica’s memory card to the iPhone, and a tech bag to organize all of this new gear.

The Photo Denbow mobile studio will be ready for the next weekend trip.

September 6, 2026 / / Journal

Exploring Is Never Boring

I just returned from a quick day trip to Louisiana full of exploration and re-inspired ideas.

Only to return home, with the intention and energy disappearing. Maybe a good night’s sleep on my own bed will restore the enthusiasm.

The Jukebox in front of Lake Charles, LA at sunrise.
August 31, 2026 / / Journal

The Leica D-Lux

After twenty five years, I can finally say I am the proud owner of a Leica Camera.

To be clear, I did not drop the retail price of $2000 on a newer version of my current model. I don’t have that kind of scratch.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been looking for a dedicated compact camera. I considered the usual suspects: an old Sony Cyber-shot, a Canon PowerShot, maybe something small enough to slip into a pocket without thinking twice. I wasn’t chasing the latest technology and I wanted something that made photography feel fun again. Then I stumbled across this online.

Released in 2006, the D-Lux 3 is ancient by digital camera standards. It has a 10-megapixel CCD sensor, a simple interface, and just enough manual control 1to stay out of my way. It shoots both JPG and RAW. Most digicams never offered that. That’s exactly why I bought it. Well, to be fair, the manufacturers’s pedigree was a big influence. There is no viewfinder, just a screen to shoot from. The menu settings offer a lot of options but has a simple user interface.

My iPhone can produce technically better photos in almost every situation. That isn’t the point. I wanted a camera with a different personality, one that was intentional, deliberate, instead of convenience.

The D-Lux, now re-named to Liesel,2 is small enough to carry everywhere, and enough to produce images with a look that modern sensors will computationally smooth over. The older CCD sensor has a color signature that many photographers still appreciate, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it renders on the street.

For a ridiculously low price, I found something special. It came with the camera, charger, three batteries, all leather Leica carry case, original boxes and paperwork. It isn’t a collector’s item and not a relic because this camera is meant to be used.

Sometimes the best camera isn’t the newest one. It’s the one that makes you want to head out the door and start making photographs again.

  1. unheard of for a compact camera! ↩︎
  2. Liesel, is a popular name for a woman in Germany, because Leica is a German manufacturer) ↩︎
August 9, 2026 / / Journal

The Clean Slate Protocol

I have a problem, and it lives on four different hard drives.

For years my system for “backing up” has basically been: buy a new external drive when the old one fills up, dump a bunch of stuff on it, tell myself I’ll organize it “later,” and then never do that. Multiply that by however many drives I’ve acquired, and what I actually have isn’t a backup system, it’s digital lint clogging the filter. This includes 1half-copied folders, duplicate photo dumps from three phones ago, at least one vault that’s diverged from itself across devices like some kind of note-taking multiverse.

I am finally sitting down to fix it, and the first thing I learned is that “organize my files” is not one task, it is five tasks.

The plan I wanted to make

My instinct is to jump straight to the fun part: pick a folder structure, pick a syncing tool, figure out how a master copy would flow down to backups. I started sketching a tidy pipeline in my head, a master drive feeding a home server feeding redundant external copies.

Except none of that matters yet. You can’t design a filing system for a mess you haven’t actually looked at. I don’t know what’s duplicated. I don’t know what’s obsolete. I don’t even know what’s on some of these drives. Jumping straight to infrastructure was just a more organized way of procrastinating on the boring part.

The actual first move

My 10TB drive is the worst offender, so it’s the test case. Before I touch anything permanently, I’m copying everything off it onto a spare 5TB drive. A full, verified copy, not a drag-and-drop and a prayer. Only once I’ve confirmed that copy is intact, file for file, do I wipe the 10TB clean.

That clean drive becomes the actual master copy. Then I migrate things back onto it slowly, folder by folder, deciding what’s actually worth keeping as I go, instead of dumping the whole mess back in one shot. It’s slower. It’s also the only way I’ll trust the result.

The Glitch In The Matrix

My Denbow Operating System has to be handled differently, because unlike everything else, it’s not static. It’s live. I’m actively writing in it, and it already syncs across devices through iCloud. If I fold it into the same backup pipeline as my archived files, I risk two sync systems fighting over the same notes, or an old backup quietly overwriting something I wrote yesterday. So the vault stays on its own track. The live version keeps syncing the way it already does, and I just take periodic snapshots of it into the archive instead of treating it like every other folder.

Where this is going

Eventually the shape of the whole thing is one clean master drive, synced manually to a home file server, synced out to redundant external copies. This is the classic “more than one place, more than one format” backup logic, just built by hand instead of trusting some app to quietly do it for me. That’s a later problem, though. Right now the job is smaller and less glamorous: copy, verify, wipe, and start putting things back with some actual intention this time.

If nothing else, I’ve learned that “I’ll organize it later” is not a plan. It’s just a very patient form of avoidance because “later” finally showed up.

  1. Decades of writing, images, files, videos, music, etc ↩︎
August 2, 2026 / / Journal

Downsizing

What set me off recently was a notification from Apple stating my Apple One subscription is going up again. This makes the third time in a year I think. For me it would be an extra $24 a year, which is a helluva lot cheaper than me subscribing to a Formula 1 season pass ($90), and/or an MLS Season Pass($90)- both of which are now included with Apple TV+. But it was the bait of no raised costs (at first) that landed that hook into me. Fine, I’ll cut bait and reduce my subscription plan. Apple News, Fitness+ and 2TB of cloud storage is going away this month for me. I’ll keep the TV, Music and drop down to 200GB of cloud storage instead and save $15. This is the next iteration of digital minimization.

July 26, 2026 / / Journal

Cinephile

I have noted that as of late, of my increasing intake of foreign, independent, and/or classic films. Living in an international city and surrounded by neighbors from all over the world, or dating women from diverse cultures, or even perhaps it was the recent World Cup that has influenced this intake.

The Houston Public Library offers free (with library card) access to the Hoopla and Kanopy channels which show a wide variety of these films.

I’ve recently subscribed to the Criterion Channel as well as the A24 Channel which has really opened up a plethora of brilliant modern films. A24 also offers one free movie ticket per month at a local theater. That alone should justify the subscription service.

Lately I’ve enjoyed foreign films from Italy and Spain. Eventually I’ll dip a toe into French films. I’m told they are beautiful but that French language will take some patience for me.

Recently viewed:

Malena, starring the voluptuous Monica Bellucci

The Taming of The Scoundrel, starring Ornella Muti

Open Your Eyes starring Penelope Cruz

Jamon, Jamon starring Penelope Cruz.

Right, I am seeing a pattern here of beautiful Italian and Spanish actresses. Hmm, I need to analyze that at a later time. Right now I am too focused on the screen.

July 26, 2026 / / Journal

Analog Collection and Curation

For reasons I cannot explain properly, I have added tenfold to my collection of paper books this past year. Here is a list of a few of these in book catalog from the Library page. I just realized the number there is actually way lower than listed because I haven’t kept up the records.

In addition to print books, I have acquired almost 400 movies and music on various disc formats. I’ve also added vinyl records as well. Maybe one day I will add a multi-media catalog to this site?

In the back of my mind, and maybe a justification for all of this is future-proofing. Streaming costs could skyrocket. Streamers may choose not to carry the desired movie. Maybe it is because one day I will have the courage to start closing some streaming subscriptions.

Subscriptions:

  • Apple TV and Music
  • Criterion Channel
  • Amazon Prime Video (free)
  • Netflix (free)
  • Hulu (free)
  • Hoopla (free)
  • Kanopy (free)

Actually, if I am paying for only two of these that can’t be too bad, now can it? But for now, I am enjoying smell of a book, the crackles and hisses from an old record and the clarity of a musical CD.

July 15, 2026 / / Website

Restoration

I’ve been working on importing more than twenty-six years of writing back into this website. A thousand+ articles from multiple platforms from different eras of my life and from different variants of me.

The positive news is that the text made the journey but the negative news is that the images did not.

Every photograph, every illustration, every scanned memory that once lived beside those words now has to be reconnected manually. I cannot write a script that solves this issue. I’ll need to open old articles, find the original image, upload it and move on to the next.

This is digital archaeology.

Oddly enough, I don’t mind because there’s something satisfying about revisiting work that spans more than a quarter century. Some posts deserve to remain exactly as they were. A few make me wonder what on earth I was thinking of but I’ll just remind myself that it seemed important at the time.

Every single time I make a decision to improve this site, I end up breaking something. Then the task becomes to daunting in the moment and I’ll ignore it for a few months. Maybe I was figuring out all the variables before I could solve the equation?

July 7, 2026 / / Journal

The Return

I know what you are thinking- and you are right1. I cannot be trusted to stick with a decision on anything when it comes to my website. The previous post from a month ago was an intent to eventually shutter this site. However, I did leave a caveat:

Also eventually, it all may come back out again in the form of an archived website, used only as a reference.

In addition to reviving the site, I am importing all of my posts from 2011 to 2026. I am still looking for the original archives2 from 2000-2011 and it is vexing me.

In yet another addition, I’ve given the site some spit and polish to make it more aesthetically pleasing to my eye and to facilitate the imported archives. There will be more tweaking and add-ons but that is for another time.

  1. ↩︎
  2. 26 years worth! ↩︎
June 6, 2026 / / Journal

Enjoy The Silence

I used to have a desire to be heard, or read. From my twenties up to my forties I couldn’t get my voice out there loudly enough. Back when blogs became popular, I moved my loud, shitty opinions online and the dialogue flowed. Now this is a monologue and how boring is that?

Inside of my early fifties, that eagerness to be read has waned in recent years. Lately I am more prone to shutting the hell up. It is definitely the internet and my own maturing that has changed since then. I definitely feel less of a desire to stay hyperconnected to culture as I age, but social media and the WWW has been enshittified over the last few years that has rendered it unusable. What was once a customizable feed of organized information is now a firehose of algorithmic crap.

Taking two steps back, even for a brief moment, you realize that none of this matters. It has no value to the individual. It is static noise.

Maybe it’s the wisdom of aging and the self-awareness of time, but I cannot be arsed with all of that anymore. The time spent trying to consume and to be heard has taken away the will to create.

The 1980’s war game computer Joshua declared that “the only winning move is not to play.“

Not to be misunderstood, I still have a lot to say. I still have a lot of opinions, sarcastic wit and valid arguments. But at the end of my day, it is time to move on with my day.

With the perspective of time and an ever-changing culture, I cannot keep up. This forced perspective has me looking inward. Eventually this website will be shuttered and the archives imported into the Denbow Operating System as well as the Denbow Decimal System. The audience total will be exactly one. Also eventually, it all may come back out again in the form of an archived website, used only as a reference.

Perhaps, my child will want to look back through it to fill in the missing gaps and know her father a little more. Perhaps that is just vanity and wishful thinking that there would ever be an interest.

I’ll keep the domain name and the custom e-mail address it is attached to for as long as needed. They are mine. It is a stake in an ever-increasing growing World Wide Web after all. This website may just be turned into a home page displaying only a portrait of myself and my minimal contact information.

Until then, I will be migrating and archiving all of the site’s content to my local server. Enjoy the silence.