Posts tagged with "portrait"

wake me up when October ends

I was doing well in terms of stick­ing to my bi-week­ly writ­ing sched­ule. Putting my mind to some­thing and being respon­si­ble to myself became a nur­tur­ing rou­tine. Then October came and I lost the plot.

pretty girl with bangs

It can’t just be love, right? I can’t be the only one who thinks she’s beau­ti­ful. Her gen­tle smile has me con­vinced it’s an objec­tive fact.

It’s the appoint­ments: den­tists, gas­tros, perios, shrinks. They all hap­pen to fall with­in a few weeks, some of them up to three times. I know they’re all there to help me, but I’ve had a frus­trat­ing and dif­fi­cult his­to­ry with most med­ical pro­fes­sion­als. At this point, I sim­ply would­n’t have the patience to sit in a wait­ing room if it weren’t for Heather there to sup­port me every time. At least I found a com­pe­tent psy­chi­a­trist; the first one who’s ever tru­ly lis­tened to me before pre­scrib­ing any med­ica­tion1.

Continue read­ing “wake me up when October ends”…

  1. One of the most impor­tant ques­tions he asked was whether or not the hos­pi­tal fol­lowed up with me after my sui­cide attempt. The answer, of course, being a resound­ing NOPE. [↩]

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. [↩]

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”. [↩]

go on

I had a fever dream one night. When I woke up, every­thing was clear. I final­ly snapped back to real­i­ty. Thank fuck.

Hitting rock bot­tom was the only way for me to gain some per­spec­tive. When you’re at the edge, you tend to get a bet­ter look at your­self. Now my recov­ery is as mete­oric as my fall. To be hon­est, I don’t know if I’m any stronger or bet­ter for it. If I ever end up in the same sit­u­a­tion again one day, will I be able to han­dle it bet­ter? For some rea­son, I don’t think so. All I know is that I held on, I’m strong enough to go on, and I had to fig­ure it out by myself.

Ryan at two

cheese

My music has been a mix of stuff late­ly, gen­er­al­ly warm and chill, and most of it being too per­son­al for me to post here. Or maybe I’m just being greedy. By a stroke of luck, I found this song after two years of scour­ing every pos­si­ble music venue (I even had my card out, ready to buy it on iTunes, but they aren’t pop­u­lar enough to be on there). I almost cried when I heard it for the first time at 320kbps.

I’m lean­ing towards the pur­chase of a clas­si­cal gui­tar (as opposed to a steel-string one). I’m sure it’s because Cohen always used a nylon-stringed gui­tar in his ear­ly albums, and this has influ­enced my palate to pre­fer a rounder, mel­low sound. Even though this deci­sion will be in the far future, I can’t help but lis­ten to as many clas­si­cal gui­tarists as pos­si­ble to see what kind of tone they can muster from their strings. Unfortunately, it’s real­ly rare to find con­tem­po­rary music (the only genre I’m inter­est­ed in play­ing) being per­formed on a clas­si­cal gui­tar, unless it’s a gim­mick tune like the theme for Super Mario Bros.

The weath­er is turn­ing love­ly the only way Autumn can, as crisp as it is fleet­ing.

I have so many ideas going through my head, and I wish I could fol­low through on all of them. Or give up writing/photography/cinematography/web design/music and focus on one at a time. But I always get bored of a medi­um, or feel the need express myself with a par­tic­u­lar one because it may bet­ter lend itself to being a voice in a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion.

peacock

A few snaps of Jeff and Darren from a quick shoot last night. I nev­er real­ized how much I need my new 70–200mm lens after get­ting a full-frame cam­era; 70mm is much too short, even in my small stu­dio room.

It’s strange to see so much nat­ur­al vignetting. I’m not sure if it’s the lens or the way the light falls off when spread across the back­ground from one direc­tion.

Jeff in hat

 

Continue read­ing “pea­cock”…