Posts tagged with "photography"

whales in the bodies of tiny fish

It’s been months since I had an appoint­ment with my ther­a­pist. I’ve need­ed the time to work on myself before mak­ing fur­ther progress with him; a sign that I’m at a point where there’s a sense of direc­tion, instead of relent­less con­fu­sion and dread. Now it’s a mat­ter of absorb­ing the con­cepts I should know by now, devel­op­ing health­i­er emo­tion­al habits, and let­ting time heal what rea­son can­not. As my body recov­ers from the phys­i­cal reper­cus­sions of depres­sion, find­ing the ener­gy to do these things gets a bit eas­i­er each sea­son1.

As a result, I’ve been pick­ing up new respon­si­bil­i­ties in my pri­ma­ry rela­tion­ship, which I have to care­ful­ly bal­ance with my per­son­al goals. Maybe that’s why my wants have become such sim­ple mat­ters. Some days, I look for­ward to noth­ing more than eat­ing ice cream after din­ner, or play­ing a game until my thumbs are raw. The dis­til­la­tion of my dreams has giv­en me anoth­er child­hood, which I’m deter­mined not to squan­der.

underboob

Part of the rea­son I stopped tak­ing pic­tures is because I need­ed to believe Heather was real. To prove to myself that she would­n’t sud­den­ly dis­ap­pear and only exist as a col­lec­tion of pix­els on my screen, like oth­ers lovers of my past2. Mostly it was because every­thing was ter­ri­ble, and just being con­scious was a bur­den. Some days I was too sad to walk or eat, let alone decide what lens to put on my cam­era or how to frame a shot. The start of any rela­tion­ship tends to be a time of won­der and excite­ment for me, but I don’t remem­ber those years with par­tic­u­lar fond­ness3.

Continue read­ing “whales in the bod­ies of tiny fish”…

  1. There have been many steps back on the jour­ney for­ward, enough for the progress to be indis­cernible from a week-to-week (or even month-by-month) basis. [↩]
  2. It’s strange to real­ize that my dri­ve to pho­to­graph things was par­tial­ly a way of deal­ing with my aban­don­ment issues. [↩]
  3. At least I feel secure in the knowl­edge that Heather stuck by me when I was lit­er­al­ly at my worst. [↩]

Troon, from Knomo

My Canon 5D Mark II has been a faith­ful com­pan­ion for five years. It’s fol­lowed me on even the most mun­dane trips, as I want­ed to be sure no expe­ri­ence was lost in the years where I found myself grow­ing beyond the fur­thest plans I’d made. However, it’s remained tucked away in the clos­et for the last while, as part of an effort to more mind­ful of each moment; moments that may be lost when I’m find­ing the right angle or wait­ing for the right scene.

As a result, the trusty LowePro Fastpack I used to take every­where — with space enough for a cam­era body, three lens­es, and an assort­ment of odds and ends — no longer fit my lifestyle and needs. Fortunately, I was giv­en a chance to try out Knomo’s Troon mes­sen­ger bag, and dis­cov­ered it’s the per­fect fit for my new jour­neys.

Knomo Troon messenger bag

Continue read­ing “Troon, from Knomo”…

the other side

Lila’s been my inspi­ra­tion late­ly. Her pho­tos are of such rou­tine sub­jects, but every frame is more than that moment. There’s some­thing about them that exudes glam­our and inti­ma­cy, as if her entire life was filled with cham­pagne and Channel.

I asked her what the­o­ry she fol­lows, what equip­ment she uses, expect­ing to learn some basic tech­nique I’ve some­how missed. Instead, she tells me she does­n’t do or use any­thing spe­cial. She does­n’t even know what she sets for expo­sure and tone, cause she always plays around and changes them for every pho­to she takes. A true Taoist when it comes to pho­tog­ra­phy, and a true pho­tog­ra­ph­er after my heart.

lila

“best birth­day ever.”, “coolest guy on the block”, “he is the one”, “London, I love you”.

One of my favourite sub­jects is her per­fect­ly-coifed, impec­ca­bly-dressed Norwegian boyfriend. Sometimes he’s just lying by the win­dow, and with his shirt off you can make out the fab­ric creas­es that have marked his back, reveal­ing that he’s recent­ly turned over on the bed. It makes you won­der what’s hap­pened, or what’s about to hap­pen. These are the details she’s cho­sen to cap­ture. These things were impor­tant enough for her to pick up her cam­era. There’s such affec­tion under it all, and per­haps that’s why it’s so fas­ci­nat­ing to see how the girl looks at the guy.

It’s the same with Aurora’s old entries:

Rolf is sit­ting a few feet away from me on a Sunday night and we’re about to play Settlers Of Catan online togeth­er. He’ll wake me with a kiss in the morn­ing and we’ll dri­ve to work togeth­er. I’m full of a tasty new sup­per that he intro­duced me to. We’ve just fucked on the floor.

Do I love him? Or do I love this? How big is the dif­fer­ence?

I’ve always won­dered what a per­son would say if she ever wrote about me the way Aurora wrote about him. To see a lover learn­ing and grow­ing, fig­ur­ing out their life and the world, and dis­cov­er­ing what part I play in all of that.

Humble & Brilliant

Jesse’s Dangerously’s lat­est knock­out album, Humble & Brilliant1, has been released as a dig­i­tal down­load only with no phys­i­cal media. However, you can also pur­chase a chap­book for those of us who enjoy the tac­tile feel­ing of lin­er notes, lyrics, and kick-ass illus­tra­tions. Included in the dig­i­tal down­load is this top­less pic­ture of Jesse I took to pro­mote the album.

Jesse Dangerously — shirtless

 

I have so many amaz­ing mem­o­ries of these songs, back before the album was released and I was doing back­up ukulele parts for a few of his acoustic sets. That was when I was just start­ing to get into play­ing an instru­ment again, except this time it was in my adult­hood and it was for reals. He gave me a draft of the album last year when all the ideas were there but he had yet to decide on how some of them were going to be exe­cut­ed, so it’s very sat­is­fy­ing to hear how pol­ished and com­plete it is now.

There were a bunch of shots we did but did­n’t end using, and they were all real­ly fun to do.

Pictures more bril­liant than hum­ble

  1. Proper pro­nun­ci­a­tion has the empha­sis on the last syl­la­ble of “Brilliant”. [↩]

the white widow makes it real easy to jerk off and take a nap

There’s been a strange inter­lude of dis­com­fort amidst the seren­i­ty.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I have so many ideas, but they all require a human sub­ject. I tried doing some land­scapes, but all I got was some shots of dirty snow and a run­ny nose. It’s the habits, details, nuances, rit­u­als, flaws, moments of peo­ple that I love to cap­ture.

rolling a joint

aLeda 100% cel­lu­lose.

I’m booked for two more wed­dings this year, and I live for those moments of chaos, when peo­ple are too wor­ried about drink­ing and eat­ing and danc­ing to think about being record­ed, a sort of ani­mat­ed jumpol­o­gy. But even though it takes me a few weeks to put the final togeth­er, wed­dings are nev­er enough. I just want to keep film­ing and edit­ing and film­ing and edit­ing.