Rain On Me

Black Swan, one of my favorite movies.

Natalie Portman, pretty much one of the most beautiful women ever.

“The great creators—the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.”

~Howard Roark, in The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Be Still My ♥

I purchased a flight to Orlando, Florida today.

Shuttle Atlantis will tentatively launch on June 28th 2011 from Kennedy Space Center to embark on mission STS-135. This will be the final launch of the space shuttle program and I will be there.

“Watch the launch of a space shuttle” is item# 38 on my life list. I can’t let the opportunity pass me by without witnessing this historic event.

Today is the 30th anniversary of NASA’s space shuttle program. I couldn’t come up with a single excuse as to why I should miss the last STS launch. 

So I’m going and I am so excited, my hands were literally trembling after I purchased my ticket.

I haven’t always had a fascination with outer space, infact, when I was a teenager there were a couple of years where I struggled with a mix of apeirophobia and astrophobia. I hated being outside after dark and avoided it at all costs. I rushed home when I knew it was close to sundown, I feared the night sky, I feared the thoughts of infinity that the night skies provoked. It was a horrible feeling that took a hold of my life completely. I was a prisoner in my own life.

Somewhere along that fear I discovered a book about constellations and I soon fell in love with Orion, and the more my knowledge of space grew, the more fascinated I became and the less afraid I felt.

Today, I love the night skies. I love space. I love the unknown. I embrace it because I learned how to see the beauty that it offers. Knowledge is truly powerful. 

I can’t wait to see the launch of this space shuttle. The end of an era, the dawn of another in space exploration, and no doubt, an epic event in my life.

                           ”Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth, 
                  like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones. “     

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don’t
grow on trees, like in the old days. So where
does one find love? When you’re sixteen it’s easy,
like being unleashed with a credit card
in a department store of kisses. There’s the first kiss.
The sloppy kiss. The peck.
The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we
shouldn’t be doing this kiss. The but your lips
taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss.
The I wish you’d quit smoking kiss.
The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad
sometimes kiss. The I know
your tongue like the back of my hand kiss. As you get
older, kisses become scarce. You’ll be driving
home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road,
with its purple thumb out. If you
were younger, you’d pull over, slide open the mouth’s
red door just to see how it fits. Oh where
does one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile.
Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling.
Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss.
Now what? Don’t invite the kiss over
and answer the door in your underwear. It’ll get suspicious
and stare at your toes. Don’t water the kiss with whiskey.
It’ll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters,
but in the morning it’ll be ashamed and sneak out of
your body without saying good-bye,
and you’ll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left
on the inside of your mouth. You must
nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it
illuminates the room. Hold it to your chest
and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from a
special beach. Place it on the tongue’s pillow,
then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath
a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C.
But one kiss levitates above all the others. The
intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss.
The I’ll love you through a brick wall kiss.
Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones. 

 ~Jeffrey McDaniel 

I’ve been spending a few weeks studying portraits such as these by Nikolas Muray. 

I don’t take as many photographs as I use to. Lately, I find I’m perfectly content admiring and learning from the work of others. I am fascinated with the stories behind their work.

Anyone can take a picture, especially these days - people buy a digital camera and they automatically deem themselves photographers. I think it’s bullshit. 

I need photography to be more for me that just selling my work. I need it to mean something to me, to tell a story. The work I’ve been doing lately is shit. Sure, it’s taught me a thing or two and for that I’m unable to dismiss it. But I hate photographing clients that mean nothing to me except a few hundred dollars in my pocket. I have one more scheduled photo shoot and after that, I’m done. I’m done photographing cute little families and kids. I’m also pretty much done photographing beautiful landscapes - I’m bored with those. They’re beautiful all on their own without me needing to capture them for someone to hang on their wall. If you want to see something beautiful, go out and live, travel, explore the world. Take your own pictures. I’m not going to sell it to you anymore.

So what is there left for me to photograph? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

I have no voice as an artist right now. I need to find my voice.

I need inspiration, I need motivation, I need something that makes my heart beat fast again because right now, honestly, my cameras are mostly collecting dust and very, very few photographs. I’m alright with that though. I’m currently learning, observing, studying, letting myself be consumed by some really amazing photographers. Cartier-Bresson, Leibovitz, Arbus, Crewdson, Natchwey, Robert Frank, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Natasha Gudermane, Alex Prager, just to name a few. 

I am humbled and excited.

My cameras will wait for me.

Polygamist/Pimp - Mark Laita

I think that if we really knew all the secrets behind the inner workings of the human mind, it would terrify us.

Sometimes I feel scattered, broken, not so well put together.

But then - I look at all the beautiful pieces that make up who I am and it’s enough to be OK with who and what I am. Laying there, vulnerable, disheveled, like the wrinkled shirttail at the end of a very long day.

I am good at a lot of things - but when it comes to the business of me, I am messy, sometimes uninterested, overly critical and highly negligent. I do however, give credit where credit is due and even I can be credited for coming a long way with myself.

I have been to dark places. Angry places. Evil places. Incredibly selfish places. But knowledge is the rope that has saved me countless times, and I seek knowledge not because I want it. I seek it because I need it.

I am not perfect and neither are you.

I hurt those I love the most, I hardly ever say what I mean to say and when I manage to say anything at all worth saying, it comes out all wrong. My lack of eloquence does no justice to my heart. My passions are best expressed artistically or sexually…. but most often, they’re just a quiet stirring and inkling that happens deep inside of me. Most will never feel or witness it. Most will only ever see how imperfect I tend to be.

But I’ve have learned -  that it is our imperfections that people will miss the most once we’re gone.

“What I wouldn’t give to find your hair in the bathroom sink again.”

I hope somebody, someday - misses something truly imperfect and beautiful about me.

What do I love about film so far? More time behind the camera, less time behind the computer.  

What do I hate about film so far? I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing…. yet. 

I got some prints back today, these mediocre ones were my two favorite ones. I feel a little discouraged, however, I’m still eager to learn and eager to keep trying. Education, practice and a lot of patience will help me improve.  

Do I miss my digital camera? A little. The digital medium is definitely easier and cheaper but not as rewarding for me as even a mediocre photo on film is. 

Each click of my Pentax is costing me money. I’m learning to become more particular about each shot instead of leaning on my digital shutter button, taking a hundred photos to produce a handful that I like. The ratio with film may be about the same right now (lol) but in time - I’m confident that my skill level will increase. I’ll learn more, gain confidence and my work will grow to show it. 

My camera’s are ready to roll.

Off I go.

Dope.

This is what the sky looked like as I was leaving the library on Wednesday night. I didn’t have film loaded into my camera yet so I had to resort to my crappy cell phone camera. (Note to self: be prepared)

The sky was gorgeous that afternoon. I sat in my car and enjoyed it for a little while. I am so amazed at the world we live in.

Am I easily impressed by something some would consider to be so mundane? Perhaps. But natural science, the physics behind what makes a sky like that possible, are anything but mundane.  

Increased knowledge = Increased beauty.

Expand your mind.