I call Bullshit!

Music | Someone to Hurt by Client

At what point do you finally draw the line and say what you feel, not caring about how egomaniacal you come out looking at the other end. I'm tired of being polite and sucking up my true feelings of the direction photography has gone to. I know that technology has made the medium more accessible and I think that is a great thing, honestly, I do. I love that we can create an immediate image and call it our own, post it on the internet and have it judged by our peers and anyone else who can find it. What gets me is the Political Correct attitude that everything has worth, to the point that we should not suggest anything negative, because there in life, we are all winners... In my daughter's fencing class, there is a sign that says, In Battle, there is a winner and there is a loser. Sometimes life comes to that. There is a winner and there is a loser, there is a positive and a negative, there is good, there is bad... Pick a side baby, because we're gonna forget about political correctness for a moment...

Is it that we want to falsely believe that we can be anything we want, without working hard endless hours to work on a craft we want to succeed in. It used to be you needed to find a mentor willing to work with you and teach you methods and techniques to accomplish a task. But now, we expect to google upon a subject, read about the trials and tribulations of some dramatic writer who also has read thru endless websites on the internet and dabble at that same task we want to achieve? That seems to be the way to get to the milestones of our desires. Where are the sore muscles, banged up fingers, worn thru leather, hours of latenight caffeine stupors til the sunrises?

I hate the easy way out. I hate that there are "photographers" these days that only know what they have read about, and follow the same paths as everyone before them. I hate that techniques in photography now require a key stroke, a cursor and mouse. I hate that reality has gone by the way side and even 5 year old boys and girls has a softening feature done to their skin tones. At what point will we recognize that the portrait of ourselves is not us?

Wake the fuck up and say something...

1 Year Anniversary

Music | I Want to Talk About You by John Coltrane

I've got a heavy heart today, out of the blue shedding tears... It was on this day a year ago my mother passed. Last year it was a Friday... I found out around 2:30 in the afternoon... I had to pick up Dara from camp and just felt the need to do something with her after I had told her the news... We drove to Forest Park, walked deep into the woods along a path that had a creek. I had told her that all of the water that fell down this creek would eventually make it to the Pacific Ocean where Grandma's home land was... Japan. We took solace knowing this and made a few rock sculptures in the river bed in her honor. We whispered our well wishes on to leaves, placed them in the water and watched them float down stream.

Today, Dara had remembered what we did and wanted to go back. However, she decided we should write notes and leave them with more rock sculptures that we would create, again in the same general place we did last year.

I'm so happy that Dara has fond memories of her Grandmother and the tradition we started one year ago today.

We're thinking of you, Mom. We love you and miss you terribly...