Author: pixellogia

Just a little blue flower to brighten this cloudy day. I signed up to run the SLC half marathon today (Actually signed up, I’ve been training with the Huntsman Heroes all winter) so I guess I have to go through with it now.

But I also get to go to the cycling team orientation tonight, so that is awesome. If you have a bike it’s not too late to join. There are lots of good events, like the Huntsman 140. It’s all for a good cause and there are nice people (and me).

I got outside today. Just walked around the yard looking at how much work the yard is going to need — and frankly, dreading it. But there were these little purple flowers? To be honest I’m not sure they aren’t just dolled up weeds. In any case I decided that with Spring actually here, at least I think it’s here, it did snow yesterday.

I decided that it was a good day to take out the macro lens and get close to the flowers. The thing about macro, is that you can have a super shallow depth of field. You can focus on one thing and have the rest just fall out of focus. You can see it in this picture. I wanted some of the veins in the leaves and the yellow center to be in focus and the rest just to fade into the background.

I took several pictures with different parts of the bloom in focus and other parts blurred. It made me think that what we see depends on where we focus. Sometimes, things like cancer take the focus from the otherwise amazing or beautiful things that can surround us every day. And it can take a long time before our focus comes back to anything but the disease and the suffering. There are triggers that mess with us long after the sickness is gone. Places we once love are ruined we can’t enjoy things we once loved.

But sometimes after a while, things just adjust themselves a little bit and the things we thought were ruined forever come back into focus, and just like that we see joy in the things that we felt we had lost. Even though sometimes it still hurts, it doesn’t feel like the end of the world. We can even find new purpose in doing things despite the fact that something is missing. It took me months before I could go into Contender, but now, even though I miss my brother every time I ride my bike and I remember sitting on his wheel or the one time he hit a tree and I beat him in a cyclocross race. Then I feel a headwind and I think — there’s my brother. And I can almost hear him telling me that he just wants me to be strong, not that he’s just being the stereotypical mean big brother. I miss him all the time, but I still feel like he’s around when I ride, just like he used to be.

Today I was wondering what would happen if I poured hot wax into cold water. My thought was that it would hit the water and spread out forming some sort of interesting shape. But the fact that water is so much denser than wax made the results look more like chewed gum. It wasn’t exactly what I was going for, but after a few trials I took what I had and turned it into a picture.

This picture isn’t really what I’d call art, but while I was climbing and my hand was falling apart I decided to put up a picture of this. Some days we just do the things we do even though we could come up with reasons not to. I could have not gone climbing because my finger hurt, and that actually might have been the smart thing to do, but there are times that we just have to press on with life even though things are tough or we just aren’t feeling it. Fortunately, my problems today were small. There are people who struggle with real issues every day.

A flash and some salt.

Not a lot to say, I just kind of liked how this turned out.

Today I went with something simple and abstract. Since it is the first day of Spring I wanted to go back to the roots of the project. I felt that with Spring being a time of rebirth and renewal I should put together a post about the people who were the reason behind the project in the first place.

Marie died of breast cancer in January 2016. Matt died in March 2016 and Nate died in March 2017, both from kidney cancer. Each ribbon is for one of them (pink for breast cancer and orange for kidney cancer).

Here’s to the Spring when we won’t need these ribbons any more.

Today I just felt like saying it’s gonna be ok.

If you have been following this project you may recognize some of the origami pieces featured in this little compilation. Today I saw this box of folded paper that I have used off and on for the last few months and thought that I should see if I could put it together in an interesting manner.

There are elements in here that I used in other photos but mixed up with ones that I used for completely different reasons, as I look at it I think of a lot of different things. I think about some of the people that were the impetus behind starting this in the first place. I see some things that I put in them that no one but me would really understand, though if you look back through the older pictures you might come up with your own meaning for them.

I thought that this was interesting to look at originally, which is why I selected it. But I continue to look at it and I see new and different things that I didn’t notice the first time. I make different associations when I look more closely at some parts. I know it seems busy and random, and it is. I sometimes like things like this that you can look at more than once and see something new in each time. It might make a good puzzle.

In a lot of ways this is how I feel about this project sometimes. I started it with some ideas of what it would look like. As I have struggled to find ideas or fought against the idea of just writing about cancer and how much it really sucks, I have seen my motivation ebb and flow. I have felt inadequate like I just wasn’t doing this project justice. And every once in a while I look back on the pictures and some of them just make me smile, or remember something sad or remind me of someone I’ve lost. It’s times like those that even though I don’t love all the pictures and some days I just feel like I have to put up something, anything really, that it’s been worth it.

I still have a long way to go, and hopefully I will be able to put together some pictures that are really great. But cancer still sucks and that’s why I started this in the first place.

Sometimes it is the little things that make a difference. I had a training run this morning and besides the hilly parts that are always somewhat torturous (aside from running that is a torture all its own) I was feeling good. But a tight IT band started to cause a little discomfort around 8 miles in. As a result, I adjusted my gait slightly to compensate for that and instead of stopping or slowing down for just a few minutes I pushed through it. So as of writing this a few hours later my knee and ankle are quite sore. Fortunately, a bit of stretching and getting acquainted with my foam roller should fix things pretty nicely.

But every time I get up or have to use the stairs I am acutely reminded of how much little things can make a difference. I posted 2 pictures today. the top one is just slightly out of focus on the front petal, a very minor adjustment in the second one fixes that.

I’ve often heard people talk about not being able to make a difference. On a grand scale that might be true. Few people make a difference to millions or billions at a time. But sometimes making a difference only takes a very small change. To be sure, it might only make a difference to one person or in one situation, but shouldn’t that be enough or reason enough to try?

Ok, this has nothing to do with Julius Caesar or the Ides of March. I was just playing with lighting today. I wanted something with some interesting shadows.