When you look into an abysss…

Something about the photo posted below made me recently think long and hard about that famous quote by Nietzsche. It is a picture I took for the paper to promote an auction that is being held by a local pregnancy center. When I took it, it suddenly left me wondering if it was real. Nothing in the picture seems real. It seems like some ridiculous ad, almost like a parody of an ad.  With its racial inclusiveness and unbelievable fake emotion, the whole image seems not only contrived, but unreal. It surpasses the usual, “just fake enough to be real,” philosophy taken by the creators of print ads and tv commercials. But after all, I took the image, so it had to be someone real. The whole experience made me feel unreal as well.

In the end, I’m not sure I can even find the right term that I’m looking for. I used a thesaurus to look up the term “unreal,” and I was left short. I couldn’t find a word that fit the feeling I had about this picture. “Fake,” “phony,” “made-up,” “imaginary,” “fanciful,” all of these don’t quite what I’m looking for.

More on this later. Until then, the photo.

“People are killing themselves to get out of this town.”

The above quote was from a local youth pastor who said that he was “tired of going to the hospital on suicide calls.”

My co-worker informed me of a double-suicide that happened today. A husband and a wife shot each other. They left a note on the door saying what they were about to do.

It won’t be in the paper because it happened in the home.

I took the photo below on an unrelated assignment today. The event had been weighing on my mind all afternoon. It affected me and my photography.

“This town really is depressing,” I thought.

Last week I went to a suicide prevention seminar at one of the schools we cover. A few students were having trouble dealing with the death of a classmate who committed suicide in August and the school brought in the owner of a local funeral home to talk to the kids.

The sad thing is, these incidents are far from isolated. Another young man from a different school man committed suicide not long after the student I just mentioned. In June, a co-worker’s son committed suicide. He was the third in his family to do so, his father and older brother both took their own lives. I’ve heard of at least a dozen suicides in this town since I moved here, about four months ago. I sure there are some I haven’t heard of since most of them don’t make the paper and are not talked about in public.

“I’ve seen this town destroy people,” a man in a bar said to me when I first moved into town. “You won’t stay long, not if you’re smart.”
As far as I know, no one has ever written an in-depth story about the suicide rate here. It’s just something that goes on, silently.

Columbus OH

More on that blur theme from Columbus OH

One second exposures rule.

Chasing the summer dream

I am surrounded by such great photography all the time that  sometimes it can be  overload. It can become so overwhelming that  sometimes I cling to certain photographers, styles or images and I forget my own way of seeing. I forget that I have two legs to stand on, two eyes to see the world and one brian to interpret it all. Most importantly, I forget that I  have one soul to feel it.

Feeling is something you can’t imitate, you can imitate lighting, and posture and mood but you can’t imitate someone’s soul. You can cop another photographer’s style, but even if the work’s good, someone will always be able to tell it is not yours. The hardest thing to do as a photographer is get over your influences – that person you’re convinced just has more talent than you – and realize that you alone have the power to make the pictures you want to make. It’s not about the school you went to or the camera you have, but the way you feel. What photography or poetry or any art is about is allowing someone to drop their guard and become overwhelmed with the emotion of a moment. A truly inspiration work of art allows you to feel life so deeply that you  don’t care who you are like being nearly brought to tears by WCW’s words in a crowded laundry mat; feeling a tinge in the corner of your eyes as you breathe in the words off the page.

A moment like that makes you realize that inspiration is inside.

night roads

I traveled back home this weekend. It’s a six hour drive each way and I drove almost the whole thing at night. There’s a certain simplicity that comes with driving at night. The headlamps illuminate the road in front of you, there isn’t really much to distract you. You drive, the car moves forward showing what is ahead of you. Surrounded by darkness, I carve out a little portion of the earth and claim it with my headlights.

Driving at night, for me at least, creates a certain kind of isolation. I feel all alone even if there are other cars out the road. And when I do stop and interact with someone. It’s always a kind of quick shallow interaction. I say, “good morning,” and pay for my gas or order pancakes an all-night diner. All the while, silently wanting  some form of deeper interaction.

Here are a few photos from my trip.

Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to

“Most of all the world is a place where parts of wholes are described.

“This is life. What am I trying escaping from? There is no escape. why do I want to escape? I’m living now, there is no higher sense, no plateau above this level of consciousness. There is no other realm. It is an intra-realm. True knowledge of the universe exists in…”

Sometimes I wonder how much influence the drugs I’ve taken have on my photography. Sometimes I apply that same question to my general life philosophy. I can’t answer that question for certain. I can’t even say they have improved anything or made things worse. But, I can say I’ve taken many photos while on LSD, and almost all of them are out of focus.

I’m thinking about doing a entire portrait series of long exposures like the second photograph.

be weary of the holy mountain

the spotted horse

To the virgins make much of time

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”

-Robert Herrick

When I arrived at the newspaper I currently work for, I had big hopes, aspirations, perhaps even stars in my eyes. I had finally made it through school, and now I was doing it. I was taking photos for a living. Now, I’ve had a few weeks to see how things operate and I must say that my dreams are slowly starting to dwindle. I now realize that if I take any interesting photos or work on any interesting assignments that it will be on my own time. So that is what this blog is about. It’s a chance to get away from the feature photos of kids on swing sets and make something of my own. I’ve decided that I can still do all the things that I want to, I just sure as shit can’t count on the newspaper’s support.

Like most newspapers the paper I work for, publishes a lot of mediocre terrible images, so I am going to try to post some interesting photos as often as I can. The worst part of this whole situation is that I am responsible for the images. I feel guilty for having contributed to the world of mediocrity. This blog is my way of making it up to you. I’m sorry for all the terrible photos that run in the newspaper.

I will try to retain my sanity along the way, because working for a crappy newspaper living in a crappy town can drive anyone crazy. I will also try to share any interesting tidbits that I have come across, photography related or otherwise.

I would like to remain somewhat anonymous. I know a lot of people can figure out where I am and who I work for. I would like to keep this our little secret. I highly doubt my boss will ever find this. But in case he does I would like to be able to deny the whole thing.

Comments welcome.

I’ll start it off with a few photos that I took yesterday.