Observation

The unobserved life is no life at all. I consider myself to be a writer and a photographer, so it's sort of hard for me to NOT observe. I find myself noticing detail, angle, light, ideas.

Sometimes I wish it could be turned off, though. I don't have the same filters that most people do. I can't stop myself from considering other points of view, can't stop plotting trajectories into the future. This can be helpful, but there are times when I would just like to be righteous and angry and yell and work myself into a big goddamn hissy fit, complete with crazy googly eyes, wild hair and spraying saliva. But that ain't me, so I gotta deal with things like I always do; step back and look at the landscape of what has passed, see if there are lessons to be learned, and do my best to learn them.

Enough navel gazing. Despite being down, there are a few things I'm excited about. First of all, I'm getting more into photography. I've been prowling my backyard with my camera, one googly eye peeled for interesting detail. I've also invested in a fancy remote for my camera, so I can take long exposure shots, including the fascinating "light painting" technique. Essentially, you leave the shutter open on a static scene for anywhere between 5 seconds to 2 hours, and you use a flashlight or external flashes to illuminate or "paint" portions of the scene.

So here are a few of the shots I've taken recently. Hope you enjoy!