Oscillating between hopeful, energetic optimism and crippling, crushing melancholy and despair, I try to be practical and avail myself of what is right in front of me to let the stuff on the inside seep out.
To avoid the ease of letting the world and time completely pass me by, I try to get out into reality a couple of times a week and perambulate the outskirts of this city. Sometimes I bring a “serious” camera, most times I can’t be bothered and I’ll just have my techtotem with me, to listen to my music.
It is a funny thing, getting your eye caught. It’s a figure of speech, but to me it pretty accurately describes what it feels like. I am walking and suddenly something I see stops me in my tracks, mentally, usually, but lately also physically.
For a long time, unless I was intending and prepared to take photos, whenever I got my eye caught in the visual weeds, I would untangle myself and keep walking. It might not be anything specific, more often than not, something quite mundane. It would be how a tree would line up against a clearing in the forest behind it. Or the way the light slanted through the bare treebranches onto the wet forest path.
The eye framing and cropping, by itself, the scene into an image, compelling me to take out my phone and capture it. A phone is an inferior camera, the technical capabilities of a real camera offer much more control and creative freedom, but as has been said many times by many people, the best camera is the one you are carrying at the time. I decided, for practical reasons, that there is truth in that.
Whether it be using a phone or a camera, I want to pay more attention to those intangible vines and tangles that trip me up, and bring more of these visions home with me. Because in the editing is where the thing I saw in my mind starts to become a reality. It’s where I can take that particular piece of rock I found that was just right and start working it into the exact shape I want and envisioned.
So I’m starting a new collection of images that, to me, represent this ephemeral feeling of loss and pain, yearning and lust. I gave the collection the name ‘Detritus’. It would please me if you would take a look. It would delight me if you felt things.
See the collection here:
