Today Photos is Writing.

 I have not been doing any blog writing in a very long time, but I have not been doing northing!

Mostly I have been working.

But that is terrible and not interesting for a blog.

Something else I have been doing is teaching myself how to take pictures (Because what the world needs now is another white guy in his 40s trying to become a photographer ... I'm not trying to take it on as an identity of anything, I'm not going to try to sell stuff or anything). I kind of feel like the writer in my sees the world a certain way and I have been using a 15+ year old Lumix GH1 and a $30 point-and-shoot (from Amazon and literally just called "Digital Camera") to try to make that writer's perspective visual. 

Or that is what I am telling myself to justify how bad I am at taking pictures; I feel like right now I have artsy high schooler who got a Rebel for Christmas vibes. But I'll work on it.

I don't exactly need another dumb little project in my life right now, yet here I am figuring out how to manage photo logistics on this little laptop without subscribing to Lightroom (I hate subscribing to things). At least no one visits this little blog, so no one will know I am doing this.

I am going to see if I can schedule out some photo posts for a little while, mostly because I think that is an interesting way to do this. I hope you enjoy blurry pictures of cats and other miscellaneous things around my apartment.

Posting pictures on a BLOG (how embarrassingly retro) makes me feel like Ferris Bueller playing the clarinet, "Never had one lesson."

Anyway, here is a picture of some flowers I grew.

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Look at this non-phone picture I took!

 

Lately I have been playing around with a VERY old Lumix GH1 and after numerous fits and starts, I finally got it to turn on and finally got a lens that was the right size, and finally got a memory card that it liked, and after taking approximately one million poorly focused photos of my cat, I was finally able to get a single halfway okay picture out of the entire endeavor. This is that picture. Is it any better than it would be if I'd taken it with a phone? Probably not. Was it worth all of the time and energy and frustration? Not really. But I like it.

Bloody.

The entryway of my apartment building has a glass security door and apparently one of the guys who lives in my complex is a photographer and he is taking Halloween pictures right now and that means that a college girl in a white dress - covered in “blood” -  is pressing herself zombie-style against that security door.  

I’m sure the pictures will be interesting, but it made it awkward for me to go check my mail.

I do love though being around all of that. LA has an artist commune called The Brewery (it is an old PBR brewery) and I have been there and as much as I was bothered by the sad quality of most of the “art” that I saw there, I still enjoy knowing that such a community exists.

This is a big part of why I am considering getting the hell out of LA in the next year or so. There is unequivocally culture in LA, but it is hard to find, hard to get to, and hard to be accepted into.

Perhaps it is like that everywhere, but I have to hope not. If a guy can shoot a horror show in my vestibule, does that mean that I’m living in the right place? Or that all that guy needed was a blood-covered model and a vestibule? Which he can find just about anywhere?

That may be the constant cosmic question of LA. Do I need to be here? or Do I only think I need to be here?

I have no answer for that.

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