I want to share you a nightmare that I just had this weekend. Even if you aren't a photographer you may understand the anxiety. I'm not adding or exaggerating any part of the dream. It's one of those hyper-realistic dreams you get once in a while:

I was photographing a wedding for a friend. It felt like spring and in a rural part of the country with the guests kept to a minimum. There were no assistant photographers with me and was shooting solo.

It was a couple minutes before the bride was going to walk down the isle. I myself am having a good time getting good shots before the ceremony. I look at the top LCD panel of my camera and see that the battery is blinking empty. Time and movement started becoming really slow. My heart felt like it sank down to my stomach. I reached my hand into the small pouch of my camera bag where I always put my two spare batteries: it was empty.

I look at my camera again and see that I also forgot to empty my memory card and the display showed that I only had 6 more images left before the SD card became full.

I became nauseous (in the dream), the 'walking down the isle' music' was playing, the guests were all silent in their seats and I was in such a panic state that I must have fainted...

Which is where I snapped out of the dream and seeing the display on my phone read 6:43AM.

Why this dream came about last night I have no idea. But this scenario is one of the reasons I don't even want to get into wedding photography: The pay is really good but it is a huge risk. Cause if you miss those critical shots, you can't re-do any of it. Photographers are serious when they say they would rather kill themselves than to call the newly weds and tell them that they lost the SD card or missed the shot(s) completely.

Anyway... that's my dream I had.

I usually spend all Saturday in DC photographing so that I'll have enough photos to edit for the next 5-6 days. But today I spent the entire Saturday indoors doing two baskets worth of laundry and cleaning up my little office space that has been cluttered with books, clothes and scattered SD cards. As I pick up these items one by one I surprise my self with the stuff I forgot I owned. I forgot that I bought Hemingway's 'A Farewell to Arms' two months ago and it was laying on the very bottom of a stack of books. I was so excited to read that book but as the days pass and schedule keeps piling up we easily forget what was at the top of our list of things we wanted to do.

📖🧱

Currently I'm reading James Joyce's biography by Richard Ellmann. It's an 800+ page brick and considered one of the greatest biographies ever written. Today I was able to get through the first 40ish pages. The hardest part was to keep track of who's who cause many of the male members of the Joyce family (before James Joyce was born) start with John or James (or something with a 'J'). So far it's covered the Joyce family before James was born, his father's constant financial problems and young Joyce's time at Clongowes to losing his virginity with a prostitute around the age of 14.

Before getting into photography I was reading a lot of books and now my attention span has been so terrible due to the time spent online. I feel everyone else has the same problem of actually trying to read a book without checking their phone in between. Right now I'm trying to put my phone in a completely different room. It's definitely this generation's "cigarette". I can't remember a day spent completely without my phone. Was actually considering getting this Stolp Phone Box which blocks all cellular signals. Obviously airplane mode can do this, but to put the phone in a box where you can't see it allows you to focus on other things within your house and feel present in the moment.

It's very common to see young kids glued to their parent's phone or on a tablet when you see them on the metro or walking in the streets and then might play console games at home. It's kind of a shame to see the youth (and adults too) not looking around their surroundings too see just how beautiful the city is. I also had my time playing video games from all morning until 3am for several years but ever since I got into photography you really pay attention to everything around you:

colors 🎨
architecture 🏛️
shapes 🔺
human interaction 🤝🏻
flow of the city 🍃
fashion 👗👔
sound 🎧
smell 👃🏻

And you try to capture what you saw into a photo. That's why street photographers are like visual poets of the common people. Street photos is something a viewer can understand even if they aren't photographers themselves.

This is a photo that I took a week ago:

This young boy was on the metro with what seemed like his grandfather and they were talking about how the metro system works. The boy was asking questions to his grandfather about which direction this rail was going and as his grandfather was explaining, he was looking at the map in front of him which is what you see in the photo above. With the way he was actively asking questions to his grandfather and trying to connect the dots together you just know that he's going to be a leader-type of person actively looking for solutions. You do hear adults say "kids don't know anything these days, they spend all their time on screens" which feels like a true statement, but curious kids like this boy and his grandfather exist everywhere even though it doesn't look it.

Even though we are pretty deep into the digital and social media age, you still see kids excited about books wanted to read or hear a good story. I'm quite positive about the future. As long as curious kids exist and we ,as adults, continue to provide these spaces that stimulate their curiosity, our future will be fine.

Good-bye for now

Respectfully,

-thegirlwholeftthefridgeopen

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