Well it looks like I stepped in unicorn poop… again.
This week is already looking to be a nightmare week for getting time to work on things. As a result I kind of jumped on the first idea that came to mind. Originally I just covered the footprint with colored salt, but that came out very pale. So I added a bunch of color and got this.
I would show you the pictures for comparison but the card got corrupted and I had to do a quick reshoot to get a picture for today. So maybe today is one of those footsteps in the sand things or possibly a nice boot to the head. It is Monday after all, so I guess it could go either way, depending on how your week started.
Without the snow, these trees are less attractive.
The short answer is: nothing.
Lots of people have used it effectively to stay in touch with people or whatever else they want to do with it. I think that is great and have no problems with it. But, I have also watched people sitting on their phones for hours on end scrolling and scrolling, and occasionally liking some post that they look at for one second before scrolling again.
If I was just trying to collect likes then I suppose this would be perfect, but that isn’t the goal. I have people send me stuff from Facebook in texts or emails several times a day, often enough that sometimes I just don’t pay a ton of attention to them all. They just become noise. I don’t want this to be noise that people just ignore or scroll past. I hope that people who are actually interested in the project will look at it from time to time or share it with people that they think will actually care about it.
Because ultimately this project is about people. For me it’s about Matt, but not only about him. When I first started running with the Huntsman Heroes, it was partly about running a marathon, because we do stupid things with our brothers. He trained for the Paris marathon while I trained for Salt Lake. I kept running because it was a good cause and I was befriended by people in the group. When Matt died I found myself running with a group of people who were supportive and encouraging when I needed just that. I hope that I can show that same support to others that they showed to me.
But I wanted to do something more. So I came up with this project. Hopefully, it will help to find a cure for cancer so that at least one fewer person has to go through losing a loved one, or watching them go through the struggle with cancer.
To infinity and… well I guess that’s as far as you can go.
From about day 2 I have rued the fact that I decided that I was going to post 300 pictures in 365 days. With all the constraints that I made at the beginning, I have found it hard to keep up and to try to create something of value on a consistent basis. Of course, if you have been following the pictures, you are probably already aware of this.
However, I once posted a picture somewhere and someone suggested that I do some behind the scenes pictures showing how I set things up or something like that and I guess that this is somewhat similar, except you are not seeing the physical setup, you are a witness to some of what is going on in my head as I work through this project. Kind of scary isn’t it? Yeah, well imagine living in here…
Remember that at the beginning of this project, one of the things I set out to do was create something with practically nothing. To be fair, the fact that I have quite a bit of camera equipment maybe skews this a bit, but I could have used a camera phone if I felt that actually using a camera was too far from the intent of the project. But that puts me in a bind some days. It is dark at 5:30 so if I want to go out and capture a picture of the outdoors I often have limited time and light. If I decide to shoot in the studio, I have a current inventory of; some googly eyes (which have a pretty limited set of uses, some clay, some salt, a couple of pieces of ribbon, food coloring and a few things donated or free magazines from the racks at the local grocery store.
So I stare at this pile of stuff and sometimes I think about what I want to say; other times I think about cancer; and sometimes I think, “Oh crap, what am I going to post today?” I don’t want to post the same picture over and over but with my limited palette I sometimes feel like I am.
This week I have been thinking about a new year and how I still have to work on those resolutions for another 2 weeks before I can completely give up and go back to life as usual (I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who relates to this). And everyone has the goal to lose weight and do something or not do something this year. New Year’s resolutions are kind of like being a kid again. It is this time where we reasonable people can make unreasonable demands of ourselves and it’s ok. For a couple of weeks we have the opportunity to say something outrageous like, “This year I’m going to make myself a jetpack,” and no one would think you were a barking lunatic. In fact, they might let you in on the secret that this year they are going to make the hoverboard real (and I don’t mean that segway knockoff that stole the name) and you would just give them a high-five. For two weeks until we all give up and go back to the same us as before, we can dream and the possibilities are infinite. Thus, today’s picture.
But in all seriousness, dream on people, dream on. (As in keep dreaming… I hate that I felt the need to clarify this, but slang.)
It’s cold and snowy these days. I guess winter is here.
We have been in a cold snap the last few days. It is nice to look at but now always fun to be out in. When the wind kicks up it’s especially nasty.
I find it funny that sometimes the most nasty conditions can turn out to be the most attractive scenes. If the temperature was warmer, it would be more pleasant to go out and walk, but the snow would melt and leave mud and dead looking bare branches. I’m not the most optimistic person by nature, but I am starting to see beauty in some of the most interesting places. I am trying to find the good when things are difficult, because sometimes even when everything just sucks, there is that one glimmer of hope or that one frosty tree in the bitter cold.
Today is the first day of a new year. I have been thinking long and hard about what today’s picture should be. I had a long list of ideas that included things like hope, new beginnings, and it ought to be better than last year.
The problem I ran into was how to portray any of those ideas. If I hadn’t constrained myself at the beginning of this project, I think I could have gone out and found something that could have represented any of these ideas adequately. But I didn’t have that luxury and had to figure out something to do with the materials that I have for this project.
After a while I thought that since this is a new year, there are infinite possibilities. This year could be anything that you want to make of it. And a lump of clay seemed to be just the right thing. So I grabbed this lump of clay and was going to just roll it into a sphere so it could be the sun or a ball or some other spherical object. That seemed too easy and not really interesting. Since this project is A Quarter for Cancer and I’m on this new beginning type theme, I pressed a quarter into the clay. It is kind of hard to see George Washington, but I assure you he is there. Then I took a few other objects and pressed them against the clay. You may recognize some or you may not.
The point of all this is that just like a lump of clay, this year or I guess your whole future if you want to go that far, is like this lump of clay. Until you do something to mold or shape it it is just a blank blob of earth. It could be anything you can imagine if you just do a little shaping.
Hopefully, we can all make something wonderful with the lump of clay we have. Good luck.
