Myself As Another

My friend, Jane, posted a link to The Black Cab Sessions. They’re pretty amazing. So is she. Here’s Daniel Johnston’s session:

I’m just trying to find the things in this world that are beautiful. This one’s on the list.

In the spirit of my recently declared pursuit of craft-honing, I walked down my block to an abandoned lot where an art collective’s warehouse burned downed a couple of years ago. I brought my still and video cameras. Such a beautiful day, I wanted to try my first outdoor video self-portrait (part of my “Myself As Another” project here). But the real reason I was there was to learn at least one simple thing about my digital still camera. I’ve been reading a bit about photography composition and camera techniques toward different purposes. I’ve always known that cameras had tons of flexibility and room for creativity, but I’d never given myself the time to learn even the basics. I’ve always been at least okay at framing shots, but my technical knowledge has been embarrassingly inept. So down the street I went, camera-in-hand.

I wanted to learn at least a little about shooting in a aperture-priority mode. From what I understand, aperture is all about depth-of-field. Basically, the aperture is the little round part of the camera (sort of like our iris/pupil), which gets bigger or smaller, depending on how much light I want to let into the camera. But since the other major factor in taking a photograph is shutter speed, aperture is really more about how quickly I want to let light into the camera. I think. (If anyone wants to correct or adjust my thinking on this one, that would be great.) If you want to have a deep range of focus, you want to have your aperture (f-stop) as high as possible. (I guess f/64 is a very high value. Ansel Adams used it, and he basically had all elements of his photographs in focus. On the low end is something like f/2.8, and that will give you a very thin depth of focus. For instance, if you wanted to photograph someone’s face, but you wanted a blurry background and foreground, you’d use a very low f-stop value.

click here for larger image.

I put my camera into aperture-priority mode, and dialed the f-stop down to it’s lower ranges. I’m not going to get super technical here, because I’m just trying to learn and think about the principles to begin with. I’m leery of getting lost too soon in the details. To practice this mode, I wanted to look for things that might create some depth. Something close and something farther away that I could capture in the same frame.

The first thing I found was this great, rusted I-beam that had been twisted violently in the intense heat and pressure of the collapsing warehouse. (If you wanna try something new, click here for a “narrated reflection” on what I learned from taking this photograph.) I tried to make the “head” end of the beam my focal point, and let the rest of the beam trail out of focus behind it. Not for any particular reason. No metaphor or story here. Just wanted to see if I could make that happen, given my understanding of what I was trying to learn. I like how it turned out, but the intended effect AND the sense of balanced composition. I like the energy the curves in the head and body of the beam create, and how this energy sort of “peels off” in the two shadows in the upper-left corner and the right half of the frame. This energy seems to even intensify with the slightly diagonal lines of the bolt shadows on the head. The lines look like they are straining to be straight in comparison to the rest of the curves and rough textures inthe rest of the picture. I love the complementary colors of the beam (orange) and the shadow (blue). I like the variation in textures, too. The color-created texture on the smooth parts of the head. The green dots of the glass strewn about in the gravel. And although I like the balance that the piece of plastic offers in the lower left corner, I just don’t get the sense that it really “fits” this composition. Rats.

click for larger image.

But for some reason, I’m more compelled by the bowling ball I found in the tall grass surrounding the crumbling concrete slab. (Here’s another “narrated reflection” on what I learned from taking this photograph.) I love that it looks so much like a globe, but that it’s sort of been abandoned along with this burned-out lot. The composition isn’t really too bad, I think. The horizon line across the top is just slanted enough to give it a little energy and to cut the eye off before it trails off the page, and that line is broken nicely by the white figures on the right and the clumped stalks in the center and slight left. Then there’s the little brown twig on the far left to draw the eye down the side of the image, where it stalls at one of the three slightly-dark shadow patches in the grass. There’s a slight incline of tone leading back up to the bowling ball. I love the color combinations of the black and blue scattered blotches on the ball and the sharp, jumbled pick-up sticks of grass and twig filling the rest of the frame. And I really like the dominant, sort of out-of-focus light-brown blade of grass stretching up and across the center of the image peeling off away to the right of the ball. What I don’t really like about this photo, I guess, is that that the lower-right half of the image isn’t very interesting or stimulating. Noisy, but not in an energetic sort of way. More like static. Less kinetic. I have to say that I find the image itself, just on the merit of its content, sort of charming.

Narrated reflection on photo of a twisted steel i-beam

Narrated Reflection on photo of a bowling ball in tall grass

Easily, my best friend in the world is Amy. Years ago, when we were roommates in Boulder, I had this recurring impulse (which I’m pretty sure she found both annoying and endearing) to throw out all of the furniture in our apartment and have everyone sit on cushions in the living room. Of course that was ridiculous. Sort of. I would have liked it, but it wouldn’t have been the most practical thing in the world.

I just wanted to make life more simple.

I still have that impulse. And lately, she’s been going through some tough times. No, you don’t get the details. Sorry. Just tough times, same as everyone else goes through tough times. Those details are not important, so don’t get started thinking about them. No, really, stop. Back to my story. So tough times. For me, too. Sort of like the mean reds at the bottom of the ocean. Ugh.

And then there’s all this clutter in my life. So many “things” in my house. Things that I care about. But caring, for me, I guess, is a sort of action. A habit. So I care about the things around me. And with so many things around me two things happen. The first is that this relationship to my surroundings becomes an atmosphere. No, “becomes and atmosphere” isn’t right at all. At first it seemed right, but no, “becomes,” is wrong. “Atmosphere” is right, though. But there’s always an atmosphere to any living space. Sort of like weather. Clear skies can be great, but they can also foster an abundance of intensity or lack of texture. Clouds offer objects for our imagination, but often harbor rain. And fog can be dangerous to ships and planes, but no atmosphere wraps you in its quieting blanket like fog. So every living space has a weather, an atmosphere. And mine has been an abundance of investment, I think, for too long. I sense that it’s become an oppression.

And maybe I’ve started to feel that way about most of the rest of my life. My dedication to my dissertation. My incessant preoccupation with one woman, then another. My tendency to watch every episode of every season of a television show once I decide to invest in it. Each of these things is important to me. I could add cooking, bicycling, carpentry, digital production, movies, an endless book of poems I’ve been working on for years. And so life is cluttered, much like my house. And I long for simplicity. For less.

I consider any one of the things I care about, and wish that I could cut other things from my life to make more room to concentrate on it. And then I walk into another room–on my way to the bathroom, or another cup of coffee, or out the front door–and I’m confronted with another “something” about which I care deeply. What to do? Tough.

And I think lately, I’ve been trying to avoid making decisions about what’s going to be “in” my life, and what’s going to be (gulp) “out.”

What I know for sure is that Amy will be “in,” and that some things need to be tossed to make more room for here in my heart. Maybe that’s what it is. My heart is cluttered. Maybe it’s not my mind at all.

So, I’ll have to get started tossing things out. No, not the couch. But something. And then something else. To change the room. To clear the air.

And I suppose this means saying goodbye to some things about which I thought I really cared. Any probably did. But can’t anymore.

Like one of my favorite blogs, Zen Habits, suggests, I’ll have to start with a blank slate. Start exploring the ways I understand my priorities.

The Plan

Start with a blank sheet of paper. Record one priority. Then another. In no particular order, a list.

One commitment competing with another for space on the same page. The page will likely be cluttered. Likely crowded.

And then, like I wanted to with that old couch in that Boulder apartment, I’ll toss something out.

And something remaining will get more room. And I’ll toss something else. And the air will clear a bit more.

Until the page looks like something I can live with.

And then I’ll start figuring out how carve this new life out of the old.

Slow. Patient. Determined. Confident. Breathing. Deeply.

Maybe productive. Maybe focused again.

Maybe at peace.