odds and ends...

So as you can tell it has been a few weeks since I have done much on this page, and believe me it's not for lack of ideas, but more for a lack of time. I have to sleep, so somethings suffer, and since this place is not something that is actually making me any money, I have to back burner it now and then. A couple of other things have also kept me form being a busy blogger, namely Facebook and my new camera! You can see from the last few posts that I have been a busy little photographer.

I have now had the camera for about 5 weeks and I noticed the frame count today was nearing 3000. Yes, I am a prolific snapper. Not all of my snaps are collectible photos, but each of them teaches me something, and therefore they are valuable. In fact, today I have decided that I wished to try and get a better understanding of exactly how flash compensation worked, and so I sat down in the shade and shot a few geraniums at various settings to see how the various flash settings affected the shots. And I recorded the data for each shot in my little data book so that I may later refer to the data to help me perfect my technique. The truth is that I much prefer to use natural light and the shadows that it casts, just as it casts them, however there are times when I do and will need to understand how to use a flash to eliminate certain harsh shadows or to even the light across a subject. Thus I have to learn how to do it, when the situation is controlled and I can learn without the pressure of the shots "counting". Getting a grip to be sure.

Facebook seems to be slightly addictive, and I am trying to find ways of interacting a little more with people and getting some feedback. There are certain people who constantly give feedback, and I do appreciate it to an extent, but there is a limit to good wishes from people. Sometimes rather than simply telling me how much they like my stuff, I would like it if they told their other friends how much they like it, and get me some more eyes and maybe some eyes looking to buy! I have been putting up various pictures that I have been taking, especially with my new camera, and The hope is that eventually I will be able to start selling prints. I am not looking to get rich, honestly, I would love to be able to make a living at photography, but I know that it is a long way to get to that point. I know that I am not the best business mind, I am much more creative. That said, in order to make a living at photography, I have to figure out what my niche is. Am I a nature photography, or an action shooter? Am I a concert portrait maker, or do I capture the raw emotion of an event? I have been taking pictures at fire scenes, and I have shot some youth sports. I love taking pictures of plants and flowers and trying to capture the peacefulness or grandeur of landscapes. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to take some portrait style pics of my niece for her senior pictures. What did I like best?

Truthfully, I liked doing all of it. I like nothing better than looking at the world and seeing what I want to capture and then the satisfaction of getting some shots that turn out to be exactly what I had in my head when I initially looked at the scene.

I have this dream of doing a book about barns, as any longtime (longtime being since last fall when I started it!) reader of this blog can tell you, I love barns, and especially the old gambrel roofed style barns. Sadly, they are a disappearing structure in the American landscape, and the history that they hold is disappearing with them. How many times have you driven down the road and seen a lone silo standing sentinel over an empty field? You can bet that lying below that silo is the remains of a barn, whether collapsed into the ground or burned in some tragedy or demolition, it is the barn that raised the silo. The lone silo is the orphaned child of the barn. I don't know if I will ever have the drive to actually finish the book, but perhaps someday I will get much closer to getting it done.

I have been taking pictures yes, but I have also been writing about them. In more than one place. I have the pictures on Facebook and each one has a little something with it as an explanation, and in some cases I use the pictures to illustrate some narrative about what they are or why I took them. Recently someone was looking at some of my pics and asked me why I took a particular picture, and my immediate response was to ask, why not? In the age of digital cameras, there is no good reason NOT to take a picture. True that in many cases you only get a snapshot and not what the professionals call a "picture", but what is a picture but a well staged,placed and/or planned snapshot. By definition the BEST pictures of the last 100 years have been lucky snapshots when someone was in the right place at the right time shooting the scene. "The Execution" in Saigon, "Napalm girl", The flag raising at Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima. Granted the most famous one is a staged event, but the original was a snapshot. Part of the photographers job is being in the right place at the right time, and knowing where to look when the action is taking place. The guys on the sidelines of the big league games, they have earned a place there, so that they have the chance to get that special shot that becomes iconic for a particular athlete, like the crestfallen look of Scott Norwood after he missed the field-goal that lost the Super Bowl, or the moment of triumph when Lance Armstrong crossed the finish line for his 5th consecutive Tour De France win. The guy who was positioned to capture the flight of Richard Petty along the fence at Daytona when he went airborne. These guys have only one chance to get that particular iconic shot, and if they miss it or screw it up, they will never get the chance again, and we, the public, will never be able to review it and see if it is like we remember. In these days of video, and cellphone cameras, it is likely that someone got the picture, but what would you rather see, a picture that you have to squint at to see the details, or a giant glossy poster of that perfect shot? Yeah, that's why I took that picture, because eventually no one will have to ask why I took it, because they will be able to see in the frame why I took it, whether it's the tears of defeat, the joy of victory, the gossamer wings of a dragonfly skimming across a lily pond, or the spectacular colors of an August sunset. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I truly believe that the story behind the picture is what makes the picture with it.

Pictures are art. Every snapshot, every school picture, every painting, every sand drawing. If it is a graffiti tag spray-painted on a building or the doodling of a child on a notebook, it is art. Art is in the eye of the beholder, it is interpretive and has the distinctive duality of being both valuable and worthless at the same time. Each creation is unique, if for no other reason than it is separate from all others, even the copy has it's own individual flaws that make it unique from all other copies. What we create as artists, ( and we are all artists) we always hope to have accepted by someone. Even if it is a small group that sees the innate value of your work, you always appreciate the acceptance. As an artist I know that my art has value to me, in that it is something that I have put myself into, but I hope that it captures something that gives it value to somebody else as well. When I die and the things that I have made are kept as mementos of my life, then they have a new and greater value, because I will never create or capture another piece with my unique vision. From this standpoint, one can argue that even the electrician who puts the wires in the walls of your house, that you may never see or worry about, is an artist, because his work is unique.

We are all artists, and we all deserve appreciation, it doesn't really matter the medium, or even the message, if we leave behind a piece of ourselves, that is appreciated by someone else, then we have achieved a "masterpiece".

Why are we so scared?

I recently read an article ( and when I say "recently" I mean in the last few months!) that broke down "freedom" by state. Using various legislative and social guideposts, the authors of the sited study, evaluated and graded the freedoms in each state. The conclusions were interesting to say the least, because what they found was that, in general, the states with the highest tax loads per capita had the least amount of personal freedom, and the states with the lowest tax loads had the most "perceived" freedom. Why, you may ask do I put the word "perceived" in quotes? Well, it is because, based on the study, most freedom is about perception,( ask your kids how free they feel when they are stuck in school) but when quantitatively measured, freedom has no meaning.

If a person has a job, and can feed their family and live a life that makes them happy, what freedom are they missing? If this person lives in country that is ruled by a military dictator, or by a democratically elected president makes no difference. If a different person has a job they can't stand, and makes barely enough money to live, and lives on the edge of financial ruin, never finding happiness in their entire life, are they ever truly free? Again, it makes no difference what system they live under.

Taxes that seem to go ever upward, with ever deepening cuts in the services offered, gives a feeling of the loss of freedom. When you can keep more of your wages, you feel like you have more freedom. When you are doing something that you enjoy, more than you're doing something that you don't, you feel free. Ask yourself, do you take a vacation to do stuff you hate? Of course not! Unless you're married and you take a vacation to catch up on the "Honey do.." list, then maybe you are doing stuff you don't like on vacation. See, you don't feel free then, do you?

In America, we spend so much of our time trying to meet our payments that we have lost view of what life is really about. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, were the golden trio described in our Declaration of Independence, but today we give them up for Work, Struggle and the pursuit of the next cool thing. Anybody who has lived a few years can tell you that the continuing struggle for money and belongings has sidetracked us from the real things in life, family, learning and living.

Living is one thing that the rest of the world seems to have on us. Especially the European countries. The European model has capitalism, with liberal amounts of socialism sprinkled in to make life livable for the masses, and not just for the lucky few. Health care is only one place where they have us beat. We have truly lost some greatness in our educational arenas, and our research capabilities too. Thanks very much to the odd religious nutcases who seem to get power, even when they are a minority. Long discussion for a different time.

Just as much, I pursue the dollars and the stuff. I have no time or money to do the things that I really want to do, so I compensate by getting stuff instead of going and seeing like I want to! Occasionally I have the luck and the time to get out of my small realm and see the broader world, and I always love those times. But they are far fewer that I would like, so in the middle times I amuse myself with what I think I want when I can't have what I really want. It is my freedom of choice and I use it rather unwisely!

On a lighter note.....55# gone. I have hit a plateau, but it might have to do with the hole in my back. Small surgical thing that needs to finish healing so I can get back into some more vigorous exercise. Sounds funny to say, but I miss it!

Time passages...

No, not the song, I am referring to the actual passage of time. More the perception of the passage of time. Physics tells us that time is relative, and if you don't believe it, have some relatives stay with you for a few days, and see how long THAT feels!!

It seems to come up in conversation all the time, the phrases, "Where does the time go?" and , "What happened to the time?" Well, the times goes the same way that it always does, ever forward. Since we can't yet travel at speeds exceeding the speed of light, time MUST travel forwards. Yet the actual meaning of these phrases is not literal, but rather rhetorical, how does the time pass so quickly without our noticing?

"A watched pot never boils." this is so far from true, yet it is another comment on the perception of time. In fact there was an episode of ST-TNG ( for those of you who are not geeks, Star Trek-The Next Generation) where the android character Data, tests this assertion, and finds that it always takes water the same time to boil when all variables are accounted for and factored in, whether the pot is watched or not. This is not about the pot of water, but the lack of excitement in watching a pot come to a boil. Although the time that it takes never changes, the simple act of watching it happen stretches the perceived time taken because of the lack of any other activity. And yet, "Time flys when you're having fun."

What brings all this inane stuff to my mind you are probably wondering, and I am getting to that, but I wanted to make a few points first. As much as it is a constant, for us mere mortals, it is also a liquid and elusive thing. When were are excited with anticipation for some approaching happy event or date, time crawls along, and when the time finally does arrive, it is over and done before we are ready and we wonder what happened to it. Remember when you were a kid and it seemed like summer would never end and you couldn't wait for the end of school so you could start those carefree days of summer vacation? It seemed like summer took forever to arrive, but then when it finally did, you couldn't imagine it would ever end. ( even though you knew it would!) When you are 10 years old, you have only experienced 120 months of life. 1-2-0!!! That's 3,652 days ( including leap years!) That is it! Double that to 240 months and you are now 20 years old. ( 7,305 days) Makes it seem like a lot longer than it really is since I am in the over 14,600 area! LOL Let's break it into some thinkable fractions.

When you are 12 months old, one month is 1/12 of your entire life. 1/12. When you are 12 years old, 1/12 of your life is now 1 year! When you are 24 years old, 1/12 of your life is now 2 years! The older we get, the faster time seems to go, because the frame that we have to reference gets bigger. It is the same as looking back at the clothes we wore when we were little kids, you look at those tiny shoes that your mother saved and while you can remember your feet in them, you don't remember when they no longer fit. Time is much the same, you are always aware of the passage of the time, how many hours have we spent at work just wishing the hours away so that we could go home and relax, or go on vacation, or just go have a beer? How many hours have we wasted looking for something that was "lost" only to find it someplace that we already looked, but not quite thoroughly enough? How many days of our life have passed while we have sat watching TV or reading books of somebody elses adventures. How much time lost standing in line for who knows what? The one thing that we all have in common is time.

Nobody is immune to the passage of time, if you are alive and living in our dimension. If you wish to have more time, you are shit out of luck, you get the same amount as everyone else does. 24 hours in each day. Everyone gets a different number of days, but what you do with them once you are aware that you can do something with them is where the differences come in. Some people will learn everything that they possibly can, and some people will happily sink into oblivion and never feel the need to look up. Sadly, it is a coin toss to figure out which one ends up rich and famous. There is never any telling what the fates will drop on somebody.

Because of the structure of society, there are many of us who will do the responsible thing, and waste most of our life toiling away at a job that we tolerate, and wishing for the opportunity to do the things that we truly love. Because the world requires that we have means to enjoy many things, and the only way to get these means is to work, we work. We spend 40+ hours each week working, but what about the rest of our lives?

7 days X 24 hours is 168 hours in a week. Subtract the average work week of 40 hours and that leaves 128 hours. Figure a minimum of 6 hours of sleep daily. Another 42 hours of the week gone. Leaves us with 86 hours. Take out 2 hours a day for cooking and eating, which makes 14 hours a week. Down to 72 hours already and we have barely scratched the surface. Daily shower... let's just say personal grooming... 30 minutes a day, 3.5 hours a week. 68.5 hours left. How do you get to work? How long does it take you. American average is somewhere in the 45 minute each way area, so that's 1.5 hours each day 5 days a week. 7.5 hours down the tubes. 61 precious hours left in our week, but we ain't done by a long shot. Average American watched 2.5 hours of TV daily. If you watch TV while doing other things you're ahead of the curve, but far too many people don't. So that's now another 17 .5 hours a week gone forever! We are down to 43.5 hours, but I will spot you 7 hours back, because most people eat while watching TV and we will assume that half of that is meals... so we are plus 50.5 hours. What about your daily chores, cleaning, laundry, shopping, yard and garden work, errands, anything that is considered work that you don't actually get paid for. Figure easily 3 hours each day. (averaged over 7 days) Works out to 21 hours. Now we have only 29.5 hours left.

We are down to 29.5 hours a week left to us. Spread out over 7 days, which comes out to a little more than 4 hours a day. Sounds like a lot doesn't it? But consider that is likely to be 10 minutes here and 5 minutes there, maybe a full 1/2 hour someplace along the way, and you wonder what happens to that 29.5 precious hours that you can call your own. Thinking about them will drive you nuts, but now that you know they are there you will be looking for them.

A wise person once said that it doesn't matter how many days that you live, but what you do with those days that matter. To me, a life well lived is worth far more than the money that I may or may not make along the way. Not everyone feels this way, and that is just fine. I would like to be able to pursue some dreams, but I am still pursuing the means. Perhaps someday the dreams will come, but for now I will continue looking at the minutes that I have available to me as opportunities, and whenever possible I will use those precious minutes to work on my dreams instead of just working. I hope that you will do the same, dreams are important to everyone, and it is always nice when some of them come true.