Monthly Archives: May 2009

Fish Resurrection

My bet­ta died over the week­end. After my trip to Hong Kong, for which I left him a slow-release food tablet, he was nev­er the same. The tablet was bare­ly eat­en, and turned his water a very mud­dy colour and opac­i­ty. In the weeks since my return he stayed hid­den in his lit­tle shrub at the bot­tom of the bowl.

I named him Connor, after the main char­ac­ter in the Highlander series, because he was very much a fight­ing fish, and “there can be only one” bet­ta in a bowl at a time.

Bronwen remind­ed me that the char­ac­ters in the Highlander series are immor­tals, who res­ur­rect after some time. And Connor MacLeod, being the immor­tal and his name­sake, should come back to life short­ly there­after.

So now, in the back of my head some­where, I expect to see Connor rein­car­nat­ed and swim­ming hap­pi­ly in the near­est body of water. Since I cleaned out his BiOrb, leav­ing in it only aquar­i­um rocks, that would be my Brita water jug. Good thing I don’t keep it in the fridge.

I Miss Camping

I found this old video of a bunch of us cook­ing burg­ers on the old Coleman while camp­ing in 2004. Back before Trolley or Tyler were mar­ried (or even engaged). I love the way Adam, as the only gay mem­ber of our crew, puts a t‑shirt on his head and sidles up to Tyler to join in the mer­ri­ment. Every time I watch this clip, I laugh at this exact point, in the exact same way.

I haven’t been camp­ing in too long. Even though I’m a city slick­er, I love to get out and away about once a year. Waking up in the cold, fresh air; talk­ing around a camp­fire; for­go­ing the lux­u­ry of show­ers and the inter­net; these are the things that bring you back to your human­i­ty. And often it’s as much about the peo­ple as the event, because there are bare­ly any oppor­tu­ni­ties for us to get togeth­er. I miss those guys just as much.

The Itanis

Headlocks

Thumbnail: Rana, Al
Thumbnail: Tamara 2
Thumbnail: Al, Abdallah, Omar
Thumbnail: Tamara 3
Thumbnail: Abdallah, Al

Taking por­traits of fam­i­lies is a lot hard­er than I expect­ed. It’s not so much the amount of light and large depth-of-field required (although that does play a part), but the fact that there are so many things going on at once. Getting every­one to co-ordi­nate what they’re doing becomes expo­nen­tial­ly dif­fi­cult with every extra per­son. And if only one per­son blinks, the pho­to is ruined.

Thumbnail: Tamara laughing 1
Thumbnail: Tamara laughing 2
Thumbnail: Tamara laughing 3
Thumbnail: Tamara laughing 4
Thumbnail: Tamara laughing 5

One of the biggest assets a pho­tog­ra­ph­er can have is a sense of humour. If you can make your mod­el laugh, you low­er their appre­hen­sive­ness, which brings down their guard and pro­vides you with much more nat­ur­al expres­sions. Not to men­tion the fact that it’s a plea­sure to see some­one smil­ing or laugh­ing.

The Price Of Moving On

Remember this one, or even this one?

I wrote those entries four years ago1. Amazing how much they apply to the sit­u­a­tion I’m in now. Except this time, I’m stronger because I know that I sur­vived this once already. It’s sad that at the end, all my efforts turned into an attempt at mak­ing sure I would­n’t regret any­thing by giv­ing more of myself than I should have. Because when all that you’ve giv­en makes no dif­fer­ence, and you have noth­ing left, you know for sure that there’s noth­ing else you can do. You can always say that you took the chance, and it does­n’t mat­ter if you get hurt in the end, because often you can’t sep­a­rate the two.

That’s the price you pay to look back with­out any regrets. That’s the price of mov­ing on.

And I always pay it glad­ly.

  1. It’s quite a trip to see that I was mature or smart enough to fig­ure this out back then. [↩]