A project that I just needed to start
After I took a picture of the citrus fruit I wondered what it would look like if I dried the slices out. It wasn’t as cool as I had hoped so I decided to add a splash of color. After throwing some food coloring on it I got this more colorful picture.
On another note, if you plan do to this make sure you don’t have anything nearby that you don’t want to accidentally throw food coloring on. Just saying.
Today I decided to actually cook. It happens from time to time. And while doing so, I thought that maybe a some nice citrus fruit would make a decent picture.
Today we ran for the father of one of the other Huntsman Heroes. It always sucks to hear about someone with cancer, a friend, a co-worker, a neighbor, but it’s always worse when it is family. So, while citrus fruit doesn’t have much to do with cancer, it has been on my mind today and my thoughts and prayers go out to people with cancer and people with loved ones with cancer.
Today I kind of checked out. It’s easy to do with Netflix or social media or any other numbers of distractions. Some days you just do what you have to do and others you embrace all of the should dos, could dos and have to dos and go about life. I’m not sure whether just taking some time in a day to disconnect from all of that and turning your brain off is wise, but that is what I decided to to this afternoon.
I had a different idea going into what I was going to post today, but as I just put in my headphones and concentrated on something frivolous and unimportant I just let my hands work somewhat mindlessly and ended up with a few things to photograph, most of which were failed experiments. So in the end I just felt like something colorful and simple with a pattern to it seemed the right thing. I guess I wanted to do something a little more abstract because it was one of those days you can’t describe, and more to the point you don’t want to really try.
I was thinking about the song Starry Starry Night and decided that I should to something with stars today. I’m not really sure what else I should say, I have a lot of thoughts about things today but nothing that I feel like writing about. So, I am going to leave the picture of stars and let you decide what to think about it.
Today I just thought there was another picture in the USB person vein. But with all that long hair how do they not get tangled up with each other? The answer is they do. You can see right here the mayhem that ensues when one of the USB people grabs another one by the cord.
So at work today I found these USB hubs that they were trying to get rid of. I thought I could probably do something with them so I took these three and set up this picture of the dancing men. In this post they came out looking a little less well lit than the picture so I may have to adjust the exposure a bit and update it later. Or I may just leave it unless there is interest in having a copy printed.
In any case, I just thought that today I would do something that seemed fun. I hope that you like today’s picture.
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.
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.
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.)
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.