The Product of Boredom

Oh gosh, it's a post on a blog I barely write on anymore! What is there to blog about nowadays if I have no photos to brag about? I will say, I have photo ideas fly through my head time and time again but they are a mere passing than anything. It would be cool to bring about some of them though... thinking something along the lines of drawing with penlights with the use of a fill-flash. Nothing fancy really, but something nevertheless.

Hobbies are weird how the temptation to exercise them come and go. There was a good quote in a Stephen King book explaining that all talents want is to be used, to be put into practice. If you do not, they become nothing more than pestering thoughts that entertain you time to time when your mind wanders. Finding the energy, time, and effort to put said things into practice is another thing however. It may be a form of procrastination, but I figure it is a mixture of that with the fear of negative judgement, mainly from myself, and me being slightly self-conscious about my thoughts and work.

I do that sometimes, you see... there is a small little dude inside of my head with a big voice nay-saying all my ideas. Sometimes I go along with it, sometimes I think the dude is freaking stupid and annoying as hell. I am not really saying that dude is all that bad, it just appears to enjoy nay-saying more than yay-saying.

Well maybe this weekend I can put my idea into creation. I have too many ideas that roam in my head and it is not doing me any good to keep them in there. A bottled up imagination, I dare-say sounds scarier than having someone judge an idea of mine made into fruition.

I don't post on this thing anymore...

Time and time again, I enjoy randomly remembering that I have a blog and viewing it after months of inactivity. Nothing bets going back and remembering the multiple photos and adventures that my life consisted of over two years ago. From walking home two miles in the rain at 10pm after an IU track meet to the time I broke my wrist and took pictures at the 2008 Little 500 races the day I got out of the hospital.

Crazy times, crazy times...

Now I am a full-time working person at a place called Centerstone, a community non-for-profit mental health center that provides mental health services to low income families, primarily those who have Medicaid. Funny how you can go from wanting to be a photojournalist at one point to be working at a mental health center as a case manager for adolescents down the road...

Anyways, yeah... I never really had a big plan for this blog, and well, I still do not. It was one of those things I decided to make back in my "glory days of photography" in order to show off my work. I still do the photos and I still have my camera, and despite its many dings and scratches, it still can help me make some pretty good photos. My drive is not the same as it was awhile ago and my results may not compare to many of the other photos out there today, but I am still conscious when I press the shutter to not simply make a candid photo but a real photo. That is something that will never go away.

New Year's four months late

I used to be big on the whole photography thing. Really big. Something then caused it go fizzle out. It was a culmination of many things, things that I still am not sure of. But that does not matter anymore.

I do not take as many pictures anymore under the pretense that I focused for too long taking photos of people living instead of living myself. But on occasion, I do find those days in which I find myself wanting to live through a camera lens, even if for a little while.

There is something powerful about being an observer, a captor of things usually unseen and unappreciated, that draws me back to my camera. It is almost as if you are invisible, a shade, a ghost, and it is exciting. It is exciting to see things from a point of view that barely anyone gets to see and then, when returning from the eyepiece of the camera, mulling over your results.

Here are some of my more recent results from the 2010 New Years...



These photos were taken right after New Years--everyone was enjoying a celebratory cigar outside in the freezing cold. With the perfect light, smoke, an elliptical, and slightly drunken atmosphere, conditions were perfect for me.

I am going to try to start putting more things up on this thing as time goes by, so continue to check this blog out periodically!