A Quick Post Pre-Benadryl

At the lake in the UP at Winell's cabin: July 2006

I get sleepy when they give me the Benadryl, so since I am already a bit tired, I thought I should get a quick writing in.  

My platelets were low this morning, so I am getting a little less of the Carboplatin today.  I was tired yesterday, so Emma and I had "pajama day".  We were originally going to work on pricing yard sale stuff yesterday, so I am glad that it didn't work out and I could stay home.  I told Josh this morning that I thought something was low in the red count category as I was so tired and I was looking pretty pale yesterday and today.  

I cut back on my steroids last week per docs orders.  I took only 5 instead of 10.  I did not have any reaction, so this week, I am down to 3!  I am just hoping that I don't have any reactions today while I get my chemo.  It is just a touch un-nerving.  The next couple hours will tell.   It is so much better already having cut out half of them.  I have less problems with sleeping and I don't get as puffy and swollen afterwards.  Yeah for that!  

Here is a photography related quote from Vincent Versace as a guest blogger on Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider blog.  It was an inspirtational read for me this morning, and I felt that it could apply to life as well as photography.  The post is about how to let your photos "take" you instead of you "taking" them.  It is about how sometimes, the simplest, most mundane photos are the ones that capture a moment in time.  The first paragraph has doubly the meaning for me as that is one of the reasons I do love photography as a hobby.  

We did not decide on photography as a hobby or a vocation because we needed a place to spend money so we have enough equipment to start a camera store. We came to photography because the world moves us in such a way that we want to photograph what we see so others can be moved the way we were, at least that is why I do it.

So what I invite you to consider is this, next time you go out to shoot, slow down to the speed of life instead of trying to see the world according to a predefined “check list for photographic success” which does not allow for random acts of life. What happens when we confine ourselves to someone else’s definition of correctness is we come up with images that are the same and we take them over and over again.

It is in absolutely spontaneity that we find absolute truth. To be taken by a photograph is to tell the truth of the moment. It is through spontaneity that we find the ability to take extraordinary photographs of simple things. It is easy to take a mundane photograph of an extraordinary thing, the extraordinary thing does all the heavy lifting. But to have the ability to take extraordinary photographs of the everyday…. Not only will you have been taken when you do this, but you will have created an image that will take others there with you. The architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, expressed this concept the best, “An interesting plainness is the most difficult precious thing to achieve.” Think about all the great photographs that moved you, that took you, were they not of the simplest of things?

So again, I invite you to slow down to the speed of life, make visual poems that take the viewer the way you were taken. To visually speak poetically and to write with light using the language of heightened emotion. But most importantly be sure to make it so you always allow yourself the buzz of being taken by your photographs.

In other words, slow down and enjoy life.  The simple things/moments can be the best ones.  Okay, enough of my thoughts for the morning.  

Off to take a nap!