The Call Back — 35mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/6 sec
For the first time in at least three years my urge to make more photographs—better photographs—is waxing. The call back to capture the beauty of our backyard grows louder with each passing day. My interest in this craft waned to its nadir this past spring, and I legit thought myself ready to hang ’em up. Hell, I thought giving up my gear to more appreciative hands may be the best way to move on. Instead I held on and secretly hoped for inspiration in some lesser explored corner in my mind.
Inspiration came, though not as altruistic as I would hope. Instead ego took the wheel; nothing like some wounded pride to get you back in the driver’s seat. Perhaps there is some ten year irony at work? Seeing it was something other than moral rectitude which first motivated my pursuit of this hobby a decade ago. Whatever the merits of the impetus the call back has me wanting more.
Considering the importance of growth and evolution I want to study further the execution of intentionally blurred photographs. Breaking down color and shape into more flowing forms. Using minimalist aspects to represent the glorious nature of our home turf. I have sprinkled motion blur shots like this into my landscape rotation over the years—now is the time to explore further this passion.
This corner of the internet has been quiet, eh? Rest assured all the noise has moved inside my head. Photographs have been hard to come by, and if I’m honest, the drive to make them has moved on. In short: this decade long hobby is down to fumes.
There’s little sense in making proclamations—declaring this experiment in creativity over. With luck a new spark will fire tomorrow. Yet I am willing to share my total uncertainty over how often I’ll foist the camera moving forward. I’m grateful to how much this unexpected hobby has given me these past 10 years. A near unbroken space of growth and calm. A cloistered enclave where my hamster wheel brain ceases its captured spin. Talk about a safe space.
That’s all gone now. What once restored life now saps strength. What once vented furious forces now yields to tectonic mountains of growing anxiety. There’s no more ensconced glacier of solitude to wear down the surging crags of my mind.
And still, may tomorrow bring with it the surprise of good fortune to turn everything around.
The Sea Moves — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/4 sec
Minimalism with intentional hand made motion blur. I love executing this kind of photograph. Combining a handheld approach with a smooth, confident motion panning from left to right into the sunset. It is much more involved than my typical tripod landscape. The latter leaving me with the sole task of pressing the shutter once I have framed my shot. Meanwhile this technique is visceral, taking me much closer to my own work. Involving me the way a baker kneads the bread—the hands are in there. Kneading it. Working it. Making it. Body, mind, and skill all coming together to produce something personal, something special. This process alone creates an intimacy with the work, and it shows through in the result. Here I am actually creating a thing with my hands. The sea moves right here in my palms.
All I See — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
All I see is the flat horizon. A flattened span of unfettered possibility. An openness to explore. It is within this expanse infinite paths lie hidden underfoot, below our gaze and in our hearts. How do we find them? Where do we first look? Sure footed confidence will keep us steady and stable atop firm ground, the knowing. While the wayward step finds us mired in muck, faltered and bound, the unknowing. Here we get up, set our eyes upon fired horizons and fan the flame of becoming within. We step up. We step out. The infinite becomes finite and the finite becomes one; and this is all I see.
His is the path of solitude. It is a journey not idly traveled, with headwinds, endless thought, and self-critique his only companions. Like a looking glass life reflects back upon him, projecting moments of joy and pain, sunshine and rain, triumph and abject failure. Each and every one a lesson. Through it all he has himself to turn inward. To his fortress mind and hideaway heart, twin suns lighting an island of isolation impregnable to all and impossible to reach. This is a refuge of necessity, a way station of isolation constructed piece by piece through decades of disconnectedness. Except there are no train lines connecting it. It is both inaccessible to find and impossible to leave. It is from solitude to which all his comings and goings take place.
The Winter Look — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
Tonight burned. Fast and white hot she torched across the whole of the sky. Racing Apollo to his chariot home above the clouds. Phoebus, she calls in pastel tones heard in angelic beauty, our pantheon awaits. A show of pure passion, glowing heat, and lithe quickness. A holy ember blazing light white hot enough to stop time itself, and humble enough to give it all back. Restraint wrapped around the power, a subtle mastery masked only in its wisdom.
Tonight’s sunset above the salt marsh held the classic winter look. Brooding and intense cloud striations colored in deep, fiery pastels. The cold fans the flames. The furnace burns brighter, truer. The cold clean air of winter sets a crystalline stage producing light shows in nature’s peculiar brand of high definition. Buy this you will never at a big box store. There’s really nothing like it and no Amazon box to ship it in if there were. A unique species unto her own. She’s the afternoon sky fall cloaked in the rainbowed robes of winter. Breathless you watch her leave, eyes transfixed as though you’re only seeing her singular beauty for the first ever time.
Plebs Will Out — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
After making this photograph Friday afternoon at the usual Cedar Run Dock Road spot I got to thinking. The exponential increase in not only photographs, but their quality this past decade has been extraordinary. On account of the technological powerhouses forever affixed to our palms and pockets billions of people the world over have ever improving picture making machines at the ready. The ubiquity of smartphones coupled with the increase in data and sensor power has turned every man, woman, and child into capable content creators. This has gifted us with growing volumes of splendid photographs the world over. A brand of photography that gets better and more beautiful with time. The improvement is not only at the hands of technology, either. Through the years as our phone cameras get better, it’s the near constant practice of making photographs everyday which has made us all better photographers. Anywhere you go you’ll find someone, often many someones, making a photo.
This democratization of technology has taken photography from a cloistered craft of the few into a pastime of the many. The equalization of this skill makes us all richer. Smartphones have become the great leveler, bringing high quality picture making devices to so many. This has allowed experimentation and practice by people in places who otherwise would have had no chance to learn the trade. As a photographer this excites me. It helps me to be a better photographer. It pushes us all. It’s a wonder to see regular people turning out inspiring still and videos day in and day out. The plebs will out, and I am here for it.
I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am. —Charles Horton Cooley
I came upon this quote yesterday in Jay Shetty’s audiobook, Think Like A Monk, and damn that is incisive insight. Is it not true we are but projections of projections? A skewed facsimile as we endeavor to manifest ourselves as we perceive others see us. I make this statement without judgement, more as a recognition of observable truth. In all our efforts to make ourselves, we build an edifice as an assumed image of what we think we are to others. It’s a trick, an artifice, a distortion.
The problems here are manifold. One, it assumes we know what others think of us in fact. Two, it gives too much power to the opinions and assumptions of others. Three, it assumes others know us comprehensively enough to distill our full character. Four, and most important, it removes our own agency. It strips us from discovering ourselves in sacrifice to serving an unknowable image we think others hold of us.
None of this makes us bad people, lacking and wanting of autonomy and originality. No, it’s more positive than that. It’s a friendly canary in the coal mine singing out for us to recognize this distortion in better service of our true selves. Be not buried in the soot and morass of assumed thought. Do not be the looking glass projected onto another looking glass when together we can stand apart in front of our own mirrors.
Antisocial indefinite
I’ve deactivated my accounts on the Big Three social media platforms. I said so long to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. This is not a stance in self-righteousness per se, more a timeout from too much toxic information. I doubt you need me to tell you about the inundation of anxiety and filth that has seeped into every post and every comment thread. This coupled with the induced compulsion to keep up, look cool, and fit in, was too much. I needed to get away. It’s something I wanted to do for many years, and I am glad I finally pulled the trigger. Not knowing what is going on in the outside world has been glorious.
There are some drawbacks to my decision, of course. Chief among them will be some lost connections I’ve made over the past decade—connections I cherish dearly. Another casualty is the dissemination of my photography. Far fewer eyes will see my work now. This is a blow, yet I feel the tradeoff necessary. I have this website, little traveled as it is, as my go to spot for creative self expression. I plan to continue posting photographs and writings here. I appreciate each and every one of you who visits my site. It is meaningful support to me.
Round number alert
Speaking of this website, here marks post number 500! Crazy to think I’ve made 500 entries since launching this site upon the world back in January 2014. I never thought I would have gone this far. So here’s to 500 more. Thank you all who’ve journeyed with me along the way.
“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
I first encountered this line watching Peter Jackson’s masterful film adaption of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on the big screen in 2001. Having come to the books much later I learned this was a direct lift of Tolkien’s own words. Only a fool possessed with unconquerable ego would not leverage the master as much as possible. The line resonated with me from the jump. Here a world weary Bilbo Baggins, faced with all his wisdom augmented through unnatural age, laments the end to his mentor and friend Gandalf.
It touches on a tough reality—the falseness of appearances. In spite of his age, his 111th birthday fast approaching, Bilbo had not aged in over half a century. Of course the yet unknown ring of power proved at play. Still even in the face of apparent youth Bilbo’s inner self never stopped its natural aging process. Behind the mirror he knew himself wan and tired.
I was a young man when I first came to this line in the theater. A first semester college sophomore, only 19 years old. Still I already felt stretched thin. I was the inadequate amount of butter failing to cover all that mediocre manufactured bread. I got the reference. It landed. It hit home.
At first blush it’s easy to take this single moment in a grand story as a short line about the fears of aging. About the confrontation with our own mortality. Of course that is part of it, you would not be wrong. But there’s a deeper subtext speaking of fulfillment, or more precisely, the lack thereof. Bilbo, in spite of all of his adventures and all of his years remains unfilled. Both burdened and inspired by his magic ring he still wants more.
This, too, resonates with me. I’ve demonstrated some modicum of skill with photography, flat horizon sunset photography in particular. And yet it is not enough. It’s no longer getting it done for me. It all feels like a wash, rinse, repeat exercise in both futility and repetition. Like eating the same dry piece of toast each morning with the same familiar disdain of a routine unwanted. You do it because you feel the pull of obligation. You do it because you feel you have to do it. As if somehow the world won’t turn if you don’t. As though it matters to someone This is nonsense, of course, yet we all know this feeling in some corner of our mind. It’s little more than ego over inflating our importance. Though it’s a discomfort that may precipitate change.
Except this is not fiction, and I am without a magic ring. Though I still have some measure of control. We all have a choice to break habits and make new paths. Even to disappear. For example, after a decade I deactivated my Twitter account yesterday. I have 29 days to go back on this decision, but a big part of me wants to stick with it. I am hopeful I can make this step with Facebook and Instagram next. Maintaining a public persona is hard, and it injects added stress into an already stressful world. It leaves me feeling exposed and lacking, like somehow there’s even less butter in the dish with the same damn piece of toast waiting on the plate.
