Sometimes, there's no there there

. . .
Since I did spend some time this evening playing with the photos I took today in the cemetery, I thought I'd post these before I head for beddie bye.

John and I had driven all around the graveyard, stopping here and there to take pictures, and were just about to leave when we saw the vault below built into a small rise near one of the exit roads.

I took about seven or eight pictures of it--it was too perfect not to want to get a bunch of shots. I did this one with the 'cyanotype' feature on my camera, then added a pink gradient sky. I also took some in 'sepia' mode which really look like old photos, and a couple in regular color mode.




I noticed the black square in the door, which turned out to be an actual hole through it. Cool!! What do you suppose are in there--dead people, or what?! So I set my camera on the 'night' setting, stuck it an inch or two in the hole, and took a couple pictures. Then, with pounding heart and dilating pupils and--oh, never mind. Anyway, when I looked at the shots, this is what I saw:



Nothin'.

What up with that, dude??!?!

More photos tomorrow, folks. Goodnight.

May
. . .

Today

. . .
Today, John and I went up to Hartford Hospital so that I could have the first PET/CT since my radiation to the sternum. Thank you, John, for driving, and for being with me, and for taking me to the nearest Dunkin' Donuts afterward, so I could get some coffee and start to feel human again.

The sun being out, it occurred to me after we arrived home and had a little food that I could go out and take pictures! No matter what the scan results are, I'm still living and spring is actually coming! So we headed off to the cemetery in Willimantic, and the tracks behind it.

Most of the pictures are pretty overexposed, but I'm going to play with them in Photoshop to see what I can salvage. In the meantime, enjoy this one picture of John.



. . .

Feelings, nothing more than: feelings

Feelings, whoa-oh-oh, feelings...

Just love that song. My ex used to sing:

Feelings: just like orange peelings

If you've forgotten the tune, check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjhp_0IrR1Q

Anyway, the damn things are a pain in the ass.

The shootings at Virginia Tech are awful. Being told by the techs at Hartford Hospital that I can take my Metformin before my PET/CT on Thursday, when I know damn well I can't, pisses me off. The fact that Ann McAllister, whom I met at the breast cancer list's annual get-together in Boston in October 2005, is now really sick, after being in complete remission for well over two years, freaks me out. The fact that Cathy, whom I've known for years and who is now DNEC's executive director (and my therapist's--scuze me, guru's--partner) has some very weird symptoms involving her uterus really worries me. The fact that Carrie seems very depressed and isn't talking to anyone about it--but instead is preparing to get married--worries me. The fact that Obie, our blind, deaf black lab is now 15 and a half and shows no sign of dropping dead though he smells like he already is, ticks me off...partly because I know it's bad karma for me to wish he'd just go to sleep so John and I can go off for a few mini-trips before I drop dead too. It sort of ticks me off, in fact, that he may outlive me. The fact that I really have no clue how my kids are doing worries me. Those are feelings, and I don't like them very much.

I will say, though, that I actually cried a couple of times over the past couple days. Clinical depression notwithstanding, I remember with fond nostalgia the years when I cried nearly every day. No sinus headaches, no knots in my stomach, no exploding head. Goddamn, goddamn, 'tis why I am goddamn, so 'gainst the winter's balm (if you don't know the song, remember: Google is your friend).

All right. One new piece of art to balance out this whine.

Water
. . .

Thoughts of death

. . .
I hope this doesn't sound...um...conceited, I guess, is the word I want...but I do think my photography and digital collages are improving.

For one thing, I'm getting to know how to use Photoshop a lot better. When I look back at my older collages, they look rather crude to me--not bad, just sort of naive. As I relax with both the photography and the way I put images together, I guess I am, more and more, giving myself permission to express myself freely, rather than copying other people's techniques, to create what I think others will approve.

I've been in one of these moods lately--you'll see what I mean when you look at these images.

Dust to Dust

Them That Sleep

These collages are both made from pictures I took myself--I didn't have to rely on any stock images for them. The first one has a photo of a deer skeleton that John and I found behind the Semel factory in Amston. (The original's not blurry.) The statues in the two collages come from two different cemeteries; the one in "Them That Sleep" is not in the graveyard pictured in the background.

I suppose I think more and more about death these days. If you had told me ten years ago that I could have lived so serenely as I am living now with a diagnosis of terminal cancer, I would not have believed you. Next week I have my PET/CT scan to see how effective the radiation to my sternum was, and, of course, to see if I have other metastases. Of course I hope I'm okay, but I'll just accept what comes. I'll be upset if there's spread, especially if it's significant, and then I'll get over it.

This is how I think things should be. Americans think death is a terrible thing, when it's simply the natural thing. The Life Extension Foundation, which sells all manner of supplements that supposedly extend life, has posited, apparently, that humans might be able to live 500 years, under ideal circumstances. Is that a good thing? Where would all the new little humans fit? How would there be enough food and fuel to go around? Why can we not stop thinking that we are the pinnacle and perfection of God's plan?

I comfort myself with thinking that, perhaps, someday we shall evolve.

May
. . .

Abandoned Service Station

. . .

Entryway Ceiling

Door

Electrical Fixture

Storage Room

Patches of Sunshine

. . .

I may be slow, but I'm learning...

. . .
A kind soul on Urban Exploration Resource clued me in to the 'rule of thirds', which says that if you locate a central feature of your photo on one of the crosses on a grid like the one below, your photo will be much more interesting than if you just center it.



He tells me that 99.99% of the time, he doesn't crop his photos--he composes them properly when he takes the picture--but since the Semel Smokestack photo I took already existed, I decided to play with it to see if just following that rule would actually improve the photo. Below is what I came up with:


The original is in the post dated March 31. You can judge for yourself, but I think this one is better. So now, when I'm editing my pictures in Photoshop, I copy the grid above and paste it on the photo to see if a central feature does indeed fall on one of the crosses. Someday I may learn to compose them a bit better, but for now cropping will have to do.

Some I seem to have composed well by instinct or accident. In my next post I'll post a photo of crocuses that is obviously 'photoshopped', but which more or less followed the rule when I shot it.

I need a small book on the basics of photo composition, I think. The trouble is, there aren't any such books, that I can find, anyway. They're all huge and either hopelessly complicated or too simplistic (one said, if the sun comes out suddenly after a rain, look for a rainbow because they make good pictures), and all of them contain things that are not pertinent. I don't want all the technical details; I just want to learn how to take a decent, reasonably aesthetically pleasing photo.

One of the guys at UER said my photos were okay...just don't go around calling myself a photographer. A woman wrote in to ask what his definition of 'photographer' was--and was it from a regular dictionary or the Holier-Than-Thou dictionary? Seems to me that a person who takes photographs is...well, you know.

After I post my crocus thing on eBay, I'll put it up here. You're welcome to click on the link on the left to my eBay auctions...and of course, to purchase it, if you like :>) I come cheap.

May

More pics

. . .

Supplication

Monument

. . .