Photographs

I was just looking at the “About Me” section of this blog.  I started thinking about modifications and additions to the photography section and realized it was enough info to justify a post of its own.

The son of amateur artists, I fancy myself in a similar category.  Mom is crafty and creative, a decorator down to the core, an extrovert who loves to sing out loud and wear a lot of bling.  Dad is the dark, silent type, a musician who still practices every day.  He also carries a drawing notebook in his pocket so he can capture noses and eyes and landscapes with his careful pencil.

I think of myself in artistic terms as, first, as a writer, and also as a photographer.  Not that I’m great at either, but I greatly enjoy the process of honing the skills I have.

My first and favorite writing class was Mrs. Browns 8th grade creative writing.  She pushed me to do my best work, and filled me with ideas that continue to keep me writing all these years later.  In her classroom, I felt happiness, frustration, anger, acceptance, and love.  As the only boy in a class of 25 or so of the cutest and most popular girls in the school, I also felt very outnumbered.

It was this class that pulled together all the text, layout and photographs for the school’s yearbook.  And I was fortunate enough to be nominated the school photographer.  I already owned my little Kodak Disk camera at that time, but this assignment set me firmly on a lifelong photographic trajectory.

Since then, I have taken photos on the top of mountains, at the bottom of lakes, and once, from the lofty trajectory of a rocket I designed and built around a tiny 110mm camera.  The picture didn’t really turn out well, and the camera didn’t survive impact with mother earth, but man was that cool.

These days I take pictures of my kiddies - at soccer games and dance recitals and when they act silly at home.  Also, often in too much of a rush to stop, I sometimes stick my camera out the car window and shoot at trains and landscapes and sunsets.  These pictures almost always turn out badly, but I keep doing it.  Something inside me needs it.

With photography, and I suppose as well with writing, I’m trying to capture the world the way I see it; the perfectly lit, splendidly detailed, and delicately, fragilely, and beautifully composed world I get to live in, to enjoy, and to marvel at every single day.

Though, I never will, for the world is too wonderfully impossible to capture.

But, I’ll keep trying.