Speaking of pictures…
I took up photography recently. I’ve always appreciated the art form, but the barrier to entry—an expensive piece of hardware—was never justifiable. Besides, today’s iPhones can do astonishing things and they’re always in our hands.
So, I snap, snap, snappity-snap-snap wherever I go. Someday soon the storage space in my iCloud account is going to be a problem. I’m at 50,000+ pictures right now. Much of it is family pictures. I often think we might have the most documented family in history.
To be honest, I never respected the art form. As an outsider, it can seem like anyone can point a camera at something and push a button. With filters, you can turn a ho-hum picture into story. If your exposure settings aren’t on point, you can make it a black and white pic and et voila! An artsy picture.
Now, I realize after taking thousands of pictures of a single flower, let’s say, I know there’s more to it. If you doubt me, go check out how many videos Ben Long has put out on LinkedIn Learning. He sure has a lot to say about a medium accessed simply through pointing and clicking.
Here are some of my recent pics. FWIW, I make zero claims about my abilities or talents in this area. I’ve taken maybe one or two pictures out of tens of thousands that I’d feel somewhat comfortable submitting somewhere, even as stock footage. But…there’s something here. Moments captured. Feelings. Moods. Maybe a story or two.
I’ll be incorporating more of my images into these posts and other things as I do a little more with multimedia. I think it’s my rebellious streak: As AI threatens the livelihoods of photographers, designers and writers, I’m learning these crafts and going all in. To Hell with the Technocore. This is what humans can do, baby!
There’s a lesson here, of course. (Did you think I wasn’t going to preach about something that’s obvious to anyone with a pulse?)
The lesson is about Shiny Object Syndrome (S.O.S.) I found this thing that’s fun, gets immediate responses, and doesn’t take long to produce. In fact, it takes a fraction of the time to capture, edit, and distribute a work of art that gets far more engagement than a piece of copy. It would be so easy to throw my time and attention at this hobby. Writing often sucks. Photography is always fun.
I’m going to keep it fun by keeping it a hobby. A buddy of mine told me I was overdue for some “self-care,” a phrase I despise, but one that seemed conspicuously okay coming from his mouth. (He says things like, “boundaries” and “affirmation,” too.) If he means I need to chill out and have some fun once in awhile, fine. Yes. Okay. So, I’m going to hit the road ASAP and find more subjects in Oklahoma’s surprisingly photogenic landscape.
Like this: Gloss Mountain State Park. It looks like my favorite Minecraft biome—badlands.
One of the defining characteristics of authentic masculinity: staying on mission. The demon Resistance wants us all mired in brain fog, mediocre, affable, second-guessing ourselves or, more often than not, doubting our purpose in life. She wants us lethargic and filled with Cheesy Poofs.
One of her most effective weapons is distraction, ideally distractions with good things. Comparatively speaking, it’s easier to neutralize a man by getting him to think he’s doing good when the thing he’s doing is actually good. Getting a man to give himself to evil runs a much greater risk of repentance somewhere down the line. But if he’s focusing all his effort on a good but wrong thing, well. He might just keep doing that thing until it’s too late.
Speaking of writing, this is my 99th post on Substack. Tomorrow’s post will be 100, a significant milestone, so you know it’s going to be a “reflections”-type post. Just be forewarned. I’ll try to keep it to less than 5,000 words. ;-)
Anyway, here are some pics. Let me know what you think!
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tk
Self care is a buzzword I've probably heard to much of. It doesnt' mean I don't need it, but I hate to hear it. And your picture count is quite low ... I'm at 300,000 now, with 4TB of iCloud storage. No idea what that means other than the fact that I take FAR too many pictures of my kids (late blooming single father -- had my first kid at 42, second at 44; 50 now raising two girls by myself). But you know, it's pretty freakin' awesome. I take pics because I want them to know the things that tickled my fancy. Yeah, they may poo poo it when they get older. But I hope they have some perspective into me because of it. Yeah, they'll have over a hundred journals to read through, but if that doesn't tell them about their dad, then, well, nothing will. All of this to say ... just do shit you like. If your kids aren't here, do it anyway and make sure they know and can find what you did. The best things I got from my dad were the amateur pictures and videos he took when I was a kid. It may not make sense to anyone else, but, damn, it makes sense to me and I figured out more of my dad from them than from anything else. And that is beautiful.
Love.