Tuesday, December 2, 2008
PET PEEVES
Monday, December 1, 2008
Commentarooni
Hunter
My weapon of choice is a complementary metal oxide semiconductor. Just over 10,000 of them actually. And I am deadly with them. Give me light and I can make war. Or love. Or laughter. Or sadness. That’s the power of the 20 ounces of metal, plastic, and circuit board slung around my neck. It may be the single most impactful invention in history with the exception of gunpowder, although the two aren’t mutually exclusive. What I do is shoot. I shoot a lot. The more I shoot, the better chance I have of getting what I want. I shoot people, animals, landscapes, buildings, events, athletes. I almost always hit my target. And I have never hurt a soul with my weapon. When I take aim, I make sure that my target isn’t right in the center of my crosshairs. It makes things more interesting that way. I don’t segregate. I shoot black & white, color. Sometimes I even change colors. I take pictures.
I like it because it’s the ultimate in using what you have. I don’t create anything. I’m not an artist. I’m a trapper. I spend hours hunting, shooting, missing, but if I come home with one truly capture I have succeeded. The hunt is half of the fun. I adhere to simple rules, all I really have to do is make a few adjustments, aim, and fire, but capturing what you want to convey is nearly impossible. I love it, however, because it can be done. People have made interesting photos out of a glass of water and a piece of white paper. It is an art. But we are not artists, we are hunters.
Something amazing happened in the ancient roman coliseum. I was looking at an old decrepit column, and I realized what I was doing. I was thinking about pictures that I could take. This is when I first realized that photography was a part of me. I realized that with my ten thousand complementary metal oxide semiconductors I could make something. Not make something, but take something. I loved it because I wasn’t making art, I was taking art and making it my own. The art was already there. I hunt art. I chase it down and I shoot it. I am a photographer; I am a hunter.
A New Appreciation
My great grandfather died a few weeks ago. He was 94 years old.
He lived through the great depression.
He fought in WWII.
He was a functional alcoholic for a good portion of his life.
He had to bury 2 of his own children and 2 wives.
He was the most grateful person I have ever met. I don’t know if it was the hard times that made him appreciate life so much, but he had a unique way of realizing how much each day really meant and how much of a gift all the people in our lives really are.
He may have been the single funniest, most loving man I have ever met. There is something about seeing a 90+ year old man crack jokes that never gets old. I don’t know if it was the delivery, or maybe how he said words that started with w-h. H-whisky. H-when. I don’t think he understood the whole silent H thing. He moved like a tortoise, but he was so quick-witted he could have held the stage with anyone.
He has seen so much of the world, most of it this side of 80 years old too. He and his first wife Eula, hiked the Grand Canyon together…and they were oooooooold. He traveled Europe, old. He went to Peru, old.
I only knew him as old. But I remember thinking he was a titan. When my brother and I were little, he would wrestle both of us in his back yard. Until the day he died, he kept the best garden I have ever seen. Never say you don’t like a vegetable until you’ve tried it out of Grandad’s garden. He built a rocking horse when I was born, it is in my dads house to this very day. I’m 18, so he was at least 76 when he did all this. Old.
And when I think about it, I know so little about him. I have heard about maybe 4 months of his life before I was born if you add it all up.
He used to be young. Who knows what he has done? This is the part where I think about what could have and should have been.
I’m the first man in my family to not go into the military, which never seemed strange until now.
Have you ever seen a book that you really wanted to read but didn’t ever get to it? Go read it.
Love You Granddad