Ireland Day 73 - Good Day

Indeed.

Sleeping in actually happened. I was so happy when I woke up this morning and saw that it was almost 10! I proceeded to loaf happily in bed, reading the internet and watching Friends.

Around 1:30 I decided that perhaps I should get out of bed and venture out of doors. I had lunch at this pizza place near Joyce's that Miriam suggested. The pizza was super good! I also ordered tea. I'm not really sure why. I guess I'm getting used to drinking it.

The weather has been a bit miserable. One of those especially dark overcast days, feels as though the sun has never quite come up.

I have my sights set on being out and seeing people this evening. Should be nice.

In all of my attempts to avoid doing a countdown, I still look at the calendar and say to myself, "In two weeks I'll be in Washington... :| " I have to follow that up with, "But in five months I'll be back"

Then I just change the subject.

My fingernails grow really rapidly here.

Lazy photo! I'm really truckin' through this book. What will I read on the plane!? D:

-MJ

New beginnings? Do-Overs? Let's pretend that didn't happen?

Two days ago, life interrupted in the most common of ways, and the result was that I forgot to post my 111th photo.

Inconsolably distraught is the only way to describe me as I realized this with a gasp at 1:30 in the morning. Commence sobbing.

When starting my 365 project, I imagined that if there were any slip-ups then I would start over. Back to photo number one. Well, that unfortunate day approached, and as I sat in bed choking and crying I decided that I wasn't interested in starting over and I certainly wasn't quitting.

So, I picked up the next day with photo number 111. I didn't think I would get as far as the 100s before slipping up and I am incredibly proud of myself. This project is important to me and I'm going to see it through. I envision more issues in the future anyway. Nothing will stop me!

Today as I approached a large staircase at school, I began to ponder if it would make a good photo. I continued to walk toward the stairs, and then stopped. I heard Ryan's voice in my head, "take a photo of anything that even remotely interests you". So I backed up and took out my mom's camera, squatted down and took a few photos. I should have taken more because I ended up cropping my favorite one to make an even better shot.

Earlier today I was looking through The Best Camera Is The One That's With You by Chase Jarvis. That man is a wealth of inspiration! His quotes and photos are so uplifting. There are photos everywhere. Everywhere! I'm excited to post more in the coming days. I'm liking my random photos more and more every day.

-MJ

Win some, lose some.

I don't know how long I'll be on this "random photo" kick, but until I'm finished it looks like I'm going to be doing photo dumps and talking about my day. Part of me wants to stop and go back to one photo subject per day, but the other part of me is having a lot of fun photographing everything that catches my eye and then picking my favorite one for my 365 photo. Of course I could do both. I believe I will starting tomorrow. Actually, probably starting Saturday because tomorrow I'm going to a concert right after work.

I've been thinking more about my restraints regarding abstract and artistic photography. I remember being in high school and letting my friends use my digital camera. They would frequently take the camera and angle it while taking a photo, or take a photo of something random for a crooked/low to the ground viewpoint. I never understood it and I recall it irritated me a lot. Especially the angled portraits of people. I would tell them not to do that because the photos would be crooked in my albums.

Thinking about it now, I know that I believed them to be taking pretentious, fake artsy photos and I didn't understand them. To me, photos were supposed to be straightforward, I was supposed to know where to look and I was supposed to be able to identify what I was looking at.

Where did this thought process come from? Why did I think this? Why do I still think this?

I wish I could pin point the turning point in my life, what I encountered that caused me to believe that any "abstract art" was new age nonsense that non-artists used to pass of as art. I feel like a jerk for revealing these thoughts right now.

But I know that I'm wrong. To a small extent, this thought process does apply to some people. However, it certainly doesn't apply to everyone or everything! I'd like to find a good art history book so I can educate myself.

I feel like a total phoney when I squat down low and take an angled photo of a random object. But sometimes I like the results. Sometimes the photo is really interesting and I quite enjoy looking at it. My eyes can travel around and around and I can find something to appreciate continuously. The tones are interesting and the colors are attractive. Why is this? It's just a random object!

Taking pictures of anything that interests me has helped though. I feel like I'm looking at the world differently everyday, even more significantly in the past few days as I've started snapping at anything that catches my eye. I've never taken angled photos until earlier this week. I'll see something I like and try taking it from different angles and tilting the camera to see if it enhances what I see. It's been working. Do I feel like a phoney still? A little bit. It'll take time to reprogram my thought process.

I named this blog 'win some, lose some' because I like some of the random photos I take more than others. Some are more interesting than others, and some feel more pretentious than others. Some of these photos I don't really "get", but I like them anyway.

-MJ