A Gallery of Thoughts and Images

But I gather no moss. I went running tonight, for the first time in a while. What was my motivation? Some show on TV of overweight British women trekking through the jungle. I didn’t have one of those moments where I said to myself, “If they can do it, so can I!” But just the idea of trekking through the jungle SAS style was enough to get me into my wicking clothes and out the door. PLUS! There was a bootleg recording of the Rage Against The Machines concert on the radio. It was great. This may sound crazy to some of you, but I’ve never listened to music as I’ve run. I like to hear things around me, especially at night. I need to keep an ear out for cars and creeps. Spent too much time living in the city I guess. But almost nothing is as motivational as Zach and his destined band rocking some Cali venue to the foundations.

Fun note; as I was running with my ultra-reliable little radio player, it fell off my belt and the battery went flying. The unit fell hard to the cement like a defeated boxer in its final round, but survived, sans battery. I immediately thought to myself, “This is why I don’t have an iPod or something.”

So by tomorrow, because of this one run, I’ll lose twenty pounds and bulk up with huge pectoral muscles and six-pack abs! Look out world. For the day shall come when I stare down from my throne with eyes of jade and coal, splintering and smoldering, and my subjects shall cower in fear of my fiery gaze. My brass chest plate, engraved with symbols of my stallions and victories, will protect my bold and conquering heart. A tight beard of black and red, sunlit with gray, stained with the best meats and cheeses of the Americas, shall not filter my roaring laughter and words of genius. Poets shall be inspired to award-winning achievement. Artists shall scribe in paint the stories of my legend. A new Renaissance shall blossom from my sword and pen.

Yet, every night, my humble heart shall cry out and I’ll grow a garden from my tears at her remembered smell, her hair, her half-closed eyes under passion’s spell. I’ll die every night if I ever made her chest rise and fall with a sigh. My battle-torn skin shall mock the memory of her smooth porcelain cheeks and skin that shall never know the crinkles of weather and age while they serve out a life-sentence of solitary within the cage of my memory, doomed to never grow old, happier or more pure.

Still, I’ll try to remember until my mind succumbs to daggers of age and teeth of time. And imagined nights of laying down, arms intertwined, protecting hands and edges smoothed soft cloud like in effervescent drama and brilliant beauty, though never happening, may quell the disastrous ocean from coming in as a tide.

Well, that last blog entry now seems a bit harsh to me. But that’s what I was feeling at the time. And it’s a blog. So it includes the present but only in the past tense.

Work is getting slowly but surely easier for me now. Instead of 15 things hanging over my head, I only have 5 or so now. And because new things aren’t coming in as quickly, I am able to increase my efficiency and rate of job completion at an exponential rate. Yesterday, someone asked me for a photo to be sent to the ad agency we use here at work. And literally 1 minute later, they had an email in their hands with that requested photo. The two photo shoots I had today are currently sitting on the shared drive ready to be picked up by the clients. I even had time to eat outside today. Funny how things change. Life, job, stress, and of course Love.

Since this is a photography blog, I try and keep things centered around that, even though most of the time I just want to talk about Love, poetry and other silly things which you readers may not care about. You probably want to know how I take photos or what equipment I’m using.

By the way, we’ve been using the new Nikon D2Xs at work and I can assure you that it’s an amazing camera. That’s easy to say being that it’s Nikon’s flagship camera. But I didn’t expect it to be this much better. It’s much easier to use than the D1X and D100, much much faster, it’s still light and still ergonomic. And the speedlights can communicate with it and now use less power for fill flash. So all of my shoots now look better. Very nice. Is it the right tool for the job? Could I make do with some other less-expensive camera?

All I know is that you can cut your toe nails with wire strippers but it will take a long time to make your nails look like crap. You can get a compliment from an 83 year old woman, but she may be half blind or senile and talking about someone else. You can use a chair as a ladder, but you might fall and break your neck trying to get a shot for the inside of a brochure that no one may ever read except at your funeral out of some ironic sick twist.

So I’ll stick with the nice camera and hope that people like my work. Maybe it’s time to go to New York, like in Great Expectations, and make all of my dreams come true.

You’ll learn. You’ll see that there’s something outside of yourself that you use to get what you need to get. It’s not something that you HAVE to do, it’s something you choose to do. And it might be a struggle. It’s certainly a pain in the ass sometimes. But in your more honest moments, you’ll remember when it was easier to fail than try to succeed.

The above photo is a good example of this. April doesn’t lend itself to preparations for snowy weather unless you live in the Yukon or Alaska. And maybe those places have good weathermen who actually try at their jobs. But here in Chicago, where the weathermen don’t say that all that snow is coming near you, you have to be ready to make some difficult choices.

For this shot, I was already done with my other photo shoot, the one I was getting paid to do. And after soaking both shoes in the parking lot with icewater and nearly falling several times with my unreasonable footwear, I saw that my car was completely covered in snow. I knew it would be a good photo, but I put the camera in the back and got in the car to leave anyway. But then I stopped. Something inside of me knew that there was an opportunity for a unique shot of snow in April. So I drove to the middle of the lot, got out and took some shots. They were OK. But off in the distance, I could see a wide open field. An open area which would help separate the car from the background. I considered leaving. I was cold, and every SECOND that I stayed outside, I was getting progressively more and more soaked with the wet slushy snow. But I knew I had to get this photo. So I got in, reparked the car further away from the crowd and near the frozen golf courses. I got out, stepped away and took a sighting. I was far too close for a 105mm Macro lens. I knew I’d have to slog through at least another 50 feet of ankle deep slushy water to get the shot. And I knew that my camera and lens were getting wet, even though I was trying to protect them. But there was a shot there somewhere if I was willing to create it. I ran another 50 feet and got low. I squeezed another few shots, moved around, took some more and then, and only then, when I knew I had some shots and options to work with, did I sprint back to the relative warmth of the car.

This isn’t combat photography, but people involved in those situations are also making decisions like this. It’s a relative comfort level decision. Will I be static and comfortable? Or will I potentially wreak my life in one way or another for the higher purpose I believe in? Will I sacrifice for the good of something outside of myself?

In this case, yes. For I’ve seen the opportunities go swooping by, in and out of your life like a bird across an open barn door. I’ll always love what I do, and I’ll always regret the opportunities I’ve not captured and made my own. There’s a heart waiting to be won, a tear waiting to be expressed, and an inspiration waiting to be handed over to someone else. I want to be the person to do that. I want to be the kind of person who sees the opportunity and goes for it. I’ve missed so many already. But in the end, I’ll live with love lost, rather than love never known. For my existence depends on it.

And with tears and longing, a forgotten child cringes, small hands clutching at the unpurchased toy, the life preserver and the reason and the hated reason, love at first sight, pretending not to notice the fading nearness of mothers skirt, vague fantasies projecting into mysteries.

And all the world collapses in a blacked out tunnel, frozen light, dulled echoes, imaginary pins of sound with applied meaning, throbbing pulse in his brain, cold compression in the chest, palms sweaty and mouth dry.

And the wanting desire for the now-trinket melting slowly into the realization that for wanting a better life the one he knew is slipping into the sea of adult stares and premature independence for this new untouchable. Darkness shall come, I shall not be found, my world is as short as a thick fog on a still sea.

The motion, the familiar footstep, the turn of a hand and the way her back aches against the purse, there she is.

Quotes are a lens which brings life into focus some times. The movie Gladiator has a few of these quotes. “What we do in this life echoes throughout eternity.” I think these are good words to live by and though I’ve doubted the existence of eternity in the past, I’ve come to feel that believing in it is a blanket which keeps out the cold of the world sometimes. And like consequences, some things exist whether or not you believe in them. If eternity does exist, I want my choices to be something that I can be proud of.

So it all comes down to choices. I’m at a point in my life where I can look back on the portfolio of my life and examine how I’ve been doing, what I’ve done and the ping pong action of choices effecting the overall game. A few years ago, I used to drink with a girlfriend and our friends. But I lost control one night and never got drunk again. By not drinking, I lost the girlfriend, lost the friends, but I feel better and now I don’t feel like I have to blame my actions on some outside influence. I like that freedom and I like being able to take charge of my choices since I can now see how my life had changed because of them. And life is full of enough conditions that blind side you that having a little control over your section of the world make things a little easier when the storms come.

But again I’ve lost something. A remarkable girl. An opportunity for happiness. The choices I’ve made, my life in a nutshell, and the direction I’m headed in are all factors in this loss. Up until now I’ve been comfortable with my choices, for the most part. But now I’ve lost this thing I want and it’s because of everything I’ve done. She represents the traditional “good” and within that framework, I’m the stereotypical prodigal son. I feel that I’m ready to come home in order to have this girl, this woman in my life. But that would lead me into a whole new direction. Again I have a crisis of conscience. Am I doing things wrong? Will I suffer in the long run or am I on the track that is best for me. Am I supposed to be on a track that is best for me? Or am I supposed to live for others?

“To thine own self be true,” is a Shakespeare quote that I’ve heard my whole life. “You are responsible for your own immortal soul,” my mother often said. I’m a man on a boat in the ocean. And I’ve seen things and done things which have steered my course more or less in the direction I feel is right and good. But am I actually going anywhere? Or am I just surviving and maintaining this course because it’s selfishly easier?

Her choices have lead her to this same point. She’s lost something too I think though our time together. Have her choices made it impossible for us to be together? Can they be looked at individually like that? Can my choices?

Only together do our choices make our lives incompatible. Our directions are different, but we both long to jump on each others boats. Should I give up my heading and sail along with her? Should she? Or should we do as we have and sail on to different sunsets? There are wakes behind us that mix together in a smokey kiss. Waves of music, talking hands and kisses echo around this time and place, glinting in the light. The ocean conspires to keep us apart.

I’m leaning far out from my boat straining to see every last glimpse of her eyes across the sea, sailing away.

Memories. Those funny little thoughts. They are like packets of imagination except they are supposedly real. But many lawyers depend on the fact that they aren’t real. Perhaps because of their association with the imagination, they’ve acquired a bad rep. They can change the color of a car, the height of an attacker, even the reality of the most important events in your life. The idea that people can “lie to themselves” also helps make the case that memories are an amorphous hologram projected on the water of the brain, changing with the tide of mood and the storms of age.

Unfortunately, photographs are seen as a replacement/enhancement for those horribly inaccurate memories. In fact, Nikon has a new system in place which accurately logs and reveals any and all altering or editing of a photo in any way. Known as “Image Authentication”, it logs any change. Now, this to me assumes that the original photo will be able to prove something. I can tell you that having shot photos for years, cameras lie. Angle, focal length, shutter speed and exposure are just some of the tools the camera uses to take a unique look at the world for a set section of time. It can compress space so two people look like they are right next to each other. It can stretch time so that it looks like there are 5 people jumping over a candle instead of just the one. It can erase beauty and dignify evil.

So is this new tool from Nikon a bad thing? It’s being targeted toward the CSI crowd and lawyers. And since photos have been used as evidence for years, it’s probably a good thing that image manipulation will be logged. But with greater ability and knowledge comes greater responsibility. And I can see this tool being used against those who are honest.

The problem lies with photography in general. Even the greatest photographers speak of being surprised at what comes out of the camera. And shooting raw images requires the final “developing” of those images within the digital darkroom. Will these final “changes” be logged as manipulations of the purity of the original camera image? Is there such a thing? Lots of people have lots of opinions of Photoshop. But I see Photoshop as a tool for creating the final vision of the photographer, just as an enlarger and a pan of chemicals did during the film age. However, some feel that Photoshop is “cheating” because it’s such a powerful tool. Amazing scenes of picturesque beauty are now often dismissed as being “chops” or created in Photoshop. The skills of the most advanced shooters are diminished by the very existence of such a flexible program.

How will this problem be solved? Where will the line be drawn in the sand? Will the debate rage on forever? How will photography be defined in the future? And when will photography earn the shoddy reputation that memory now is forced to endure?

Well, I’ve finally caved and created a blog. Easy as can be and I can see why everyone in the world seems to have one. The process from thinking about doing a blog to typing here has taken approximately 2 minutes. Eeek. Now, if only the utility companies could reach that kind of service, I think we might be getting somewhere as a society.