[I]n order to write a book, do a deed, paint a picture with some life in it, one has to be alive oneself. And so, unless you never want to progress, study is a matter of very secondary importance for you. Enjoy yourself as much as you can, have as many diversions as you can, and remember that what people demand in art nowadays is something very much alive, with strong colour and great intensity. So intensify your own health and strength and life a little; that is the best study.
Vincent Van Gogh
Epigraph
Preservationists
“We’re all so frightened by time, the way it moves on and the way things disappear. That’s why we’re photographers. We’re preservationists by nature. We take pictures to stop time, to commit moments to eternity. Human nature made tangible.
People are taking more pictures now than ever before, billions of them, but there are no slides, no prints. Just data. Electronic dust. Years from now when they dig us up there won’t be any pictures to find, no record of who we were or how we lived.”
Ben Ryder, Kodachrome
I Am An Imbecile
“Photography is a marvelous discovery, a science that has attracted the greatest intellects, and art that excites the most astute minds—and one that can be practiced by any imbecile.” — Nadar (1910)
Have An Adventure
“I’m sorry, I may never find a place this nice again, but I need to go out into the world and have my adventure.” – Big Fish
An Offshoot Of Meditation
““Journaling is an offshoot of meditation—a type of introspection where a record of events is welcome. It doesn’t have to mean the record is permanent. In fact, it’s probably better as ephemeral—permanently locked behind a password. But, the fact that it exists is a comfort in itself.” – CJ Chilvers
Being Sane
“I wish to get America out of my head and be sane a part of every day.”
—Thoreau’s journal, January 7, 1857
Learn
“Learn to like what doesn’t cost much.
Learn to like reading, conversation, music.
Learn to like plain food, plain service, plain cooking.
Learn to like fields, trees, brooks, hiking, rowing, climbing hills.
Learn to like people, even though some of them may be different…different from you.
Learn to like to work and enjoy the satisfaction of doing your job as well as it can be done.
Learn to like the songs of birds, the companionship of dogs.
Learn to like gardening, puttering around the house, and fixing things.
Learn to like the sunrise and sunset, the beating of rain on the roof and windows, and the gentle fall of snow on a winter day.
Learn to keep your wants simple and refuse to be controlled by the likes and dislikes of others.”– Lowell L. Bennion
Interest
“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t”
Albert Camus, The Stranger
Not Really Living
I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.
Ernest Hemingway
Why Ask Why
“Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway.”
Pablo Picasso
Picasso, when asked what his paintings meant.
Sometimes we create for the sake of creating and seeing what happens. There are times where I go out to shoot & don’t develop the film for months or post-process the digital photos in Lightroom for awhile. I do it just for the experience of creating and exploring.
The Romance of the Unusual
Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.
Ernest Hemingway
Technical Issues
If you think technology will solve your problems then you don’t understand technology – and, you don’t understand your problems.
Laurie Anderson
Find the best tool for a specific job and stick with it. This is better said than done for me since I enjoy trying all the new shiny tools to play with out there. I am getting better at this and narrowed them down to a select few for writing, post-process photography, etc.