Month: October 2018

It’s a strange thing, this project. The point of it is to raise money for cancer research. So some days I feel a lot of pressure to create a photograph that someone might want to hang on the wall. That is hard to do on any given day, but I’m not sure that it is possible to do every day. Some days the brain is empty and the best idea is one that you know no one will want. I went into this having accepted that some days the picture would be crap and I just have to cringe and keep moving forward.

Today isn’t one of those days. I’ll come back to that in a minute.

March 5, 2016 brought me to this exact spot, only on that day I was sobbing and broken. Junior high can do that to people, I guess, but I wasn’t in junior high. I was several miles into an 18 mile run. Running can also make you cry, but it wasn’t just the run that day. Fortunately, I had a lot of support or I wouldn’t have finished the run that day. That was a pretty bad day.

But if you rewinded time about 25 years the same spot was a much different place. Instead of cones imagine a silver Saab 900 pulling up to the curb blasting Strength by The Alarm (who will be playing on Friday here in Salt Lake) with a cool twenty-something in his aviator sunglasses at the wheel and his sub-90 pound blonde haired brother riding shotgun. A couple of his friends were in the back seat also getting a ride to school.

When I reminded Matt about those days, when he tried to make me much cooler than I was (unsuccessfully I’m afraid) his description of those days was, “When we were young and the world was ours.”

So, this picture reminded me of some really good times and one incredibly bad one. I realize that there are possibly three people on the face of the planet who might want a copy of this picture and two of them likely would only want it to be supportive of this project. So, the picture for the day probably won’t help me reach my goal of raising $1000 for cancer research, and that’s ok. Some pictures are going to be like that, some pictures may attract the attention of people because they find them irresistible, some are just going to get a trophy for participation, and there will hopefully be some that speak to the heart.

Until tomorrow, thanks for reading.

 

The end of another week is here. While I was thinking of what I could take a picture of today, I saw that while the leaves are falling there was still a rose growing. The rest of them were fading but this one just hadn’t yet. Some roses stay long on the bush and some bloom and die quickly.

Kind of like people sometimes.

I haven’t done any running since April. Tomorrow I start training again so snails seemed appropriate.

When I woke up just after midnight I thought, “I’ll just got back to sleep now.” Two hours later I decided that sleep was overrated for the day and got up. Needless to say, it has been a long day.

I could say a bunch of stuff about the sheep here, and the negative sheep (reversed colors like in old-timey photography) but think I won’t. I’m just going to leave the picture up and you can all wonder how long it’s been since I got any sleep, because this picture is just weird.

I stand by my use of old-timey, however. And I hate that spell check keeps trying to change it.

 

After visiting the cemetery yesterday, I thought this seemed like an appropriate picture.

Today I went back to where I started this project, the cemetery. It is strange for me to go to Matt’s grave when I have things on my mind that I would like to talk to him about. It used to be that he was the talkative one and I was taciturn. Now, I talk and he listens. It sucks when I just want him to give me some advice that he isn’t talking.

But the cemetery is an odd place. Silent, and still. So unlike Matt. I reminded him once about how he used to drive me to school, blasting the Alarm. He responded that it was when we were young and the world was ours.  Those were good times. That was Matt though — big plans, always something going on. And he could talk, about lots of things, often about bikes, sometimes about more serious things — if there are any.

Matt made me feel daring, whether it was holding his wheel on a descent or taking out his car solo, which hated going slow mind you, when I could barely drive a manual. I think how much easier this would seem if he was still around. Instead I do it for him, with much less courage than when he was around. And even though he usually beat me on the bike (but I still have the best marathon time) I still miss him.

It’s always hard to know what to say, I’m not really a writer.  And I prefer to let people decide what they think about my photos, and what they think they mean. But it also seems weird to just put a picture here without saying anything.

So this is what I will say. I tried to fold the same type of bird twice, and as you can see they turned out very different. We all have our own stories and even though cancer somehow touches all our lives, the same disease can fold us up very differently.

However you look at it, we are in this thing together. Hopefully, we can be there for others when they need us.

 

With leaves changing and the weather getting cooler it looks like winter is on its way. I was wondering what I could take a picture of today and I noticed that acorns were falling off the tree next door (not my tree) and I thought… Squirrel!. Yes, I actually got a bit distracted and totally got squirreled but I came back to the thought and decided that maybe a squirrel gathering acorns would be a good picture for the day. Since I couldn’t get a real squirrel, I had to fold one out of paper.

When I started this project, I didn’t realize just how much time it would take. I never really wanted to do a blog, but somehow it just didn’t seem like the project was complete without some way to document it as it went on.  I thought that from time to time I would explain why I chose the picture that I did, but it seems weird to post a picture on a blog site without saying something, even if it isn’t really important or enlightening.

This week has been a bit frustrating. I want to put together a set of good pictures, and I felt like I was falling short this week. I’m no sculptor, as you have been able to determine from some of this week’s pictures. While I knew that some days I might be fishing for ideas and I might have to accept a crappy picture from time to time, this week was feeling like a string of failed attempts. I suppose, that depending on the opinion of the viewer one might feel that way about all of the pictures, but there are several that I am pleased with. Anyway, I hope that you like this one.