(no title)

Oxygen.

January 26th, 2011 § Leave a Comment

Number 13 of 52 over here.

Because everyone must breathe until their dying breath. If we are ever deprived of this, it will only be our own fault.

Something tells me we’ll be long gone before we rape this planet of it’s ability to produce oxygen, though.

Respect the trees anyways, yeah?

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted here so I’m going to vomit a few weeks worth of my project 52 shots and get up to date and hopefully get back to making this literary magic happen again, because, you know, I’m the best writer ever.

I believe the last teleidoscope piece you had the very special privilege to view was, well, the very first, and I’m now on number 12, so, holy slacker, Aquaman, let’s get right down to it.

2/52: Music

3/52: Mother Nature

4/52: Starvation

5/52: Smoke

6/52: Silence

7/52: Cold

8/52: Time

9/52: Illusion

10/52: Under The Rain

11/52: Obsession

12/52: Danger Ahead

And to write of this most recent, I think it’s safe to say that we all imagine some form of danger coming up in our lives.

No matter how safe we play it, no matter how optimistic we may be, something isn’t going to go the way we would have liked, and this idea always seems to be there, lurking in the back of our minds, telling us to proceed and live with a little more caution.

This, of course, is different when we are younger and feel as if we’re invincible, partly because we’re ignorant, partly because we’re not as damaged and worn as we are as we age.

I am a firm believer that we all need to be a little more ignorant and fearless though and that we need to grab hold of that inner child and be a little more reckless sometimes.

Easier said than done, I know, but really, without danger, life’s just comfortable, and as nice as comfort may be, it doesn’t hold a candle anywhere near fun.

It’s Easy.

November 26th, 2010 § 5 Comments

February 14th, 2010, 102/365 from my 365 project.

Let me preface this by reminding you that a wise man once wrote down a phrase that I’m sure each and every one of us is familiar with and have probably even spoken (or at least sung) ourselves at some point. Let me also say I’m going to tease you and not tell you what that phrase is just yet.

When I started back to school a couple of years ago, we were asked to free write a paper in my English composition class so that our teacher could get an idea of what kind of skills we were bringing to the table. Sitting there, the first thing that popped into my head was the journey I was on. I had not only, as previously mentioned, started back to school, but I left behind an entire country, the one in which I was born and raised for the past 22 years, finally started to learn how to drive, adopted a sick puppy, and most importantly, got married, and in my stream of consciousness scribblings, I used this very phrase, and as a response, my teacher decided to use that trusty red pen of hers and critique the usage with a big, fat “cliché.”

Personally, I think the usage of that very word has become a bit cliché itself. I mean, just because you’ve heard something over and over, it doesn’t mean that no matter what context you hear it in, you can automatically dismiss it as being tired, old rubbish. Further more, just because you don’t believe in the idea of marriage (which I could tell by the look on her face she did not), it doesn’t mean you can be prejudiced, especially as a teacher, towards others who do, and use this prejudice in your critique of a students work.

I find it extremely difficult to believe that anything a person says when professing how they feel about the one they love can be considered even remotely cliché, as the whole idea behind that word is that something has become so tired and overused that it’s lost all meaning. How can the expression of love become played out? I mean, there are people that go as far as saying “I love you” has lost all meaning these days (granted this is mostly because of the douche bags out there who use it just to get into someones pants), but it hasn’t, as long as your actions match your words.

But that’s not the phrase I’m talking about.

It’s similar, but the one I speak of is one I was reminded of when my wife and I, exhausted from a taxing, dreary, ended on a good note Thanksgiving Day, collapsed onto our couch to watch a movie. One of the best quotes in the movie, to hint at what I’m working towards, is in the opening voice over by Hugh Grant in which he speaks of battling his doom and gloom with thoughts of the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. He mainly speaks of love and how it’s everywhere, going as far as saying that he’s pretty sure that when the twin towers were attacked, all of the messages were not of hate or revenge, but love and he follows this by saying “If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that love actually is all around.”

It’s simple, but it’s powerful in that it’s an intense reminder that most of us don’t really look for it.

At all.

Instead we tend to focus on the negatives in our lives, taking for granted all of the bright, wonderful people and things that surround us with every passing second, and believe me, I’m just as guilty as the rest of you.

Negativity is contagious.

I mean, as sad as it may sound, most of my childhood memory bank is made up of negative ones, but that’s only because it’s a lot easier to remember pain than pleasure and I think that’s why we cling to it.

All of our happy moments are simply that: moments of happiness.

Moments we live in for the time being, free of worry, fear, sorrow, regret, anger, violence, destruction, and mayhem.

Unfortunately, from time to time, we have to live through moments chocked full of those, and they’re the ones that leave scars that we always carry with us.

There are two ways to treat those scars though.

On one hand, they’re all we focus on, fueling an ozone depleting, ice cap melting furnace of bitterness and spite, causing us to take every chance we get to complain and be hurtful, to attack others for no reason other than to feel better about our own lives that we’ve decided are miserable, despite all of the beauty within them.

On the other, they are simply reminders of the falls we’ve taken that we’ve managed to stand up and dust ourselves off from, and use them as a cleaner, more environmentally friendly type of fuel to better our lives by accepting that we are only here for a fraction of a fraction of time and we’d be beyond stupid to waste that time beating ourselves and others up instead of embracing every moment as a chance to learn and to live and to be beautiful.

I know I am in no place to define right from wrong, but I feel safe in stating that the other hand is the direction we should be taking and I hope for your sake that none of you disagree.

The phrase I spoke of earlier, the one that I wrote in that paper and that sparked this post is the answer.

It’s the way to embrace that other hand.

It’s a path that I’m not even sure some of us realize exists as a choice.

And it just so happens to be a phrase that one John Lennon wrote and The Beatles released as a single on July 7th, 1967.

All you need is love.

All you need is love.

And despite the picture I chose for this post and that the love I feel stems from my relationship, that doesn’t mean you need someone to love and love you.

You simply need to use that heart of yours and express whats inside of it and never let anyone tell you otherwise, because they’ll try. They’ll see you and they’ll hear you and they’ll try to beat you down simply because they’re jealous of the fact that you’ve figured out a way to embrace an ability that we all have and they can’t figure it out. They’ll call you all sorts of names and laugh at you because you are a part of a minority, but you are the key to changing this. You are the key to transforming it into a majority.

Your love is your love and don’t let anyone try to take that away from you.

Today is Thanksgiving Day, and like Valentines Day, it seems to be one of very few occasions that only a fraction of people take the time to express their love for the lives they live and the people in them, and as important as days like these are, it would mean a whole lot more if we did this every day. The world wouldn’t need days dedicated to it because life would become dedicated to it.

We would become dedicated to it.

We would become it.

The secret here is that we already are and we just don’t know it.

The End Is The Beginning Is The End.

November 6th, 2010 § 2 Comments

365/365

Just so you know, I am so incredibly satisfied with my final picture.

Not to brag or anything, but I think it is an amazing piece and perfectly fitting.

Perfectly.

Now that I’ve finished and have a chance to retrospectively assess the entire 365 self-portraits in 365 days project, I can, first and foremost, tell you that it feels extremely odd that I didn’t have to take a picture last night or tonight.

Extremely.

I keep feeling like I have something I need to do before I go to bed, but I don’t.

I am completely and utterly 100% free to go to bed whenever I want and not have to worry about being exhausted and still having to grab my camera and press that shutter release, capturing some kind of distorted, made-up, altered version of myself, some part of my body, my silhouette, or a simple, plain ol’ self-portrait, because I am at the end of that road.

Sure, as I mentioned the other day, I’ve started a project 52, but I have an entire week to get each shot done.

That means if I want to do something elaborate, I can prepare for a whole week to get the shot I want.

Exactly how I want.

I don’t have to work under the pressure of getting home from work with only an hour and a half left in the day to shoot and when it doesn’t turn out and time has run out, accepting what I have and moving on.

I think the whole project would have felt a lot different if I had a place to keep things set up all the time with room to move around and store props and if I had the time to go out and get more shots in external settings instead of the majority taking place in my apartment.

While I enjoyed it and the reward in terms of growth as a photographer was fairly substantial, I don’t think I was in the best place to undertake the project.

I feel like if I had more energy and freedom I could have grown so much more than I did because I know I have the potential to be amazing. The problem is that reaching this potential is unfortunately weighed down by societal obligations, such as working a day job, where all of my energy is spent by the time I pick up my camera.

So, while I feel accomplished and proud that I made it all the way to the end, I feel I’m going to enjoy the 52 so much more and really look forward to being a part of it.

That all being said, just as I did over on my flickr, I would like to thank you.

Thank you to those of you who took interest in what I’ve been doing here and continued to come back for the updates.

I hope you continue to do so over the next 52 weeks for this new project!

Thank you to those of you who commented and shared your kinds words of encouragement.

Thank you to my puppyface for continuing to be adorable.

And most of all, thank you to my beautiful and amazing wife for putting up with it all, especially the blinding laptop screen next to her as she was trying to sleep.

Which is where I will go now.

Good night, friends, and I will see you sometime between tomorrow and next Saturday for week two!

Stop And Stare.

November 3rd, 2010 § 2 Comments

362/365

363/365 – 1/52: Once Upon A Time.

364/365

I figured that since tomorrow is the final day of my 365 I would let it stand alone and update the past three days tonight.

The first was residual Halloween emotion that needed to escape in the style of a mannequin.

If you’re frightened, that’s okay.

I am too.

The second was more 1 than 363 as it is the beginning of a new project.

Wallowing in the fact that my 365 was almost over, I couldn’t resist being a part of this in order to continue my self-portrait adventure but abandon the obligatory daily shot.

I’m really excited about having a foundation, as each week is already themed, leaving it up to me to do what I will with said theme.

The third was a copycat image of this which was a copycat of this.

I’m hoping it starts a flickr chain.

IT BETTER.

C’est L’Halloween.

October 31st, 2010 § 3 Comments

359/365

360/365

361/365

Happy Halloween, friends!

Today, I ate this for breakfast, spent an hour or so wandering an abandoned warehouse taking pictures for our first digital photo assignment in class, went grocery shopping with my beautiful, drank a quart of Mississippi Mud, watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and ate this for dinner and dessert.

Yes, we had Butterbeer.

Be jealous.

As for the above shots, the top was in anticipation of Halloween, the middle was some fun face painting, and the bottom was actual Halloween.

I have 4 days left, guys.

4 days and I will have taken a self-portrait every day for an entire year.

Jesus.

Potter.

October 29th, 2010 § Leave a Comment

358/365

With the arrival of cold weather, I felt it hard to resist bundling myself up and taking it to the extreme.

The attempt, if it’s lost on you, was to give off a Harry Potter vibe, what with the Gryffindor scarf, dark hair and the circular spectacles.

I find it fascinating that they are still releasing Harry Potter movies 10 years after they released the first one.

I still remember sending 20 dollars with a friend from school in the tenth grade to pick me up a copy of The Philosopher’s Stone that had just been released on DVD.

The tenth grade, people!