[he said i love you and i'm proud of you both]

i had this moment tonight, where i was backreading the geeky funny blog of a local band i love, where i was just completely bowled over by how lucky i am to live where i live, and to have a job that pays the bills and doesn't suck my whole soul out and allows me to see as much live music as i do, and to have a passion that consumes me.


i live in this place that isn't a city like a lot of people think of cities, but we have this music scene where all these amazing people are making this totally transcendent music, music of all noisy happy folky indie bluegrass country rap metal punk rock varieties. we have all these smart funny interesting talented people, and when they're not making music they go out and they drink shitty beer and they sing neil young covers with their friends' bands and they wear ugly shirts and they kiss their wives, and they post stupid shit to their blogs and they take pictures of their cats and their bandmates making faces and they put them on flickr, and their days jobs are cooler than mine but they are just people like i am, and the things they do, the music they play in our venues and the music they try to make in studios, all of that inspires me to make the best photos that i can make with my camera and my slightly off-center tilted framing and my ironic fondness for pbr and the way i smell when i come home from a great night at the pour house (like beer and cigarettes and like i got hugged by sweaty musicians).

it inspires me to be as kick-ass of a human being as they are.

it was this moment of complete power, of total happiness, where i felt like i could do anything. climb mountains. get out of debt. shoot an eight piece band lit only by a single red light at the 506. fall in love.

[and i won't back down]

today, while i was standing outside my office getting some fresh air, i saw an older gentleman with a large format film camera. it was a beautiful camera, and he was rocking an excellent fedora. he took some pictures of the abandoned bar that i'm obsessed with and we talked about cameras for ten minutes before he went on his way and i went back to drafting database specs.


i'm also obsessed with trolling the raleigh craigslist photo listings constantly. i'm looking for a cheapcheapcheap 50mm/f1.8 lens for boomer, my film SLR. i want to know what i can do with that lens on a film camera before i commit to either an f1.8 (cheap) or an f1.4 (beautiful) for six, the dslr.

also i am listening to tom petty and watching oregon/okstate, the pacific life bowl. thus far: no whales. tom petty and cameras, awesome; this game, less so.

[dreamed we were walking down the aisle]

sometimes i dream about photos i've never taken -- shots i missed, or shots i've never seen. i think maybe they should make me sad, these dreams, but mostly they just make me feel peaceful. i think about those photos more than i think about the ones i actually do take.

[one more shadow leans against the wall]

it is very, very quiet in the ch today, all the students gone for the holiday weekend a day early, and probably half the university employees, too. it seems like there's even less car traffic than usual, or maybe that was just the early morning feel of things. the sky is very blue.


my boss has failed to appear thus far today, which has relegated my day to a total useless waste; i would rather be home in sweatpants watching sportscenter than in the office, but in the office i am and in the office i will stay until at least 1 pm, because it's good to leave the house sometimes.

tomorrow my parents are putting my new nikon D60 into my hands, and i can't think about that too much or i start to tip over with barely restrained unabashed joy. instead i'm distracting myself by looking at old pentax 35mm cameras on ebay and reading photo blogs.

[is there sunlight on your bed]

street photography -- taking pictures of strangers -- is one of the photographic things that scares me most. that said, i may try this project after the new year, resolve to get better at doing the photographic things that freak me.


that, and also convince the american aquarium boys to let me shoot a series of promo photos that involve them wearing suits and standing in the shallow end of a swimming pool. and also have a real official photo show somewhere that strangers will look at my pictures.