Drive by shootings

I have a confession to make… I have been having an ongoing affair for many years now…
The beginning of the affair was seeded with my curiosity, a longing for something new, exciting and different… Its sustenance has been my voyeurism, and its longevity is to see into the soul of another… It has grown beyond my first expectations and its fruit is my emotion…
What started with the natural curiosity of a young boy has evolved into a love so pure and at the same time so tainted. Ever since I caught my first glimpse of her through her velvet curtains, I have been enamored of her… I love looking at her, touching her, exploring her and I even love not understanding her… But as long as I have had my illicit affair with her, I have harbored a idealistic loathing for three of her bastard children…

Yes, I am an ‘Art-snob…’ There, I said it… I love art, in all her forms and clones, and I extend that love to all of her progeny… Except three of them…

#1. ‘The inane child’… That pointless whelp, who feels validated by the unimaginative deeds his barren mind spawns, wrapping trees in cling-film, leaving a canvas blank and entitling it ‘snowstorm’, and recreating Stone-henge with old refrigerators from the 70’s… The obsequious child who lacks the Dijon to actually create, and must therefore copy or pun their way to an ill-gotten fifteen minutes, oblivious to the wastefulness of his aspirations.

#2. ‘The demented child’… That phrenetic and psychotic being which sups at the deformed, inverted teat of mother nature herself, slicing up farm animals like so much Wonder-bread, posing skinned cadavers like mannequins and creating finger paintings of the virgin and child with their own feces… The one who revels in the infamy and controversy he creates by substituting shock-value for talent, and not truly being aware of the difference.

#3. ‘The photographer child’…

Now, I have no guilt for my distaste for numbers one and two, I feel justified and can put forward many arguments as to why they should never have been born… However, the third causes me some trouble. Perhaps it’s because my exposure to photography has been limited to making sure the flash actually went off, not cutting off the tall person’s head or ensuring that everyone yelled ‘cheese’ in unison, but I just never took to photography as an art-form. I read National Geographic and Life magazine, and can understand how a truly talented photographer can use his tools and skills to penetrate the core of his subject, how a picture is worth a thousand words, and that photography is not culminated with fanning the Polaroid back and fourth in a misguided effort to develop it faster…
I’ve just never given the photographer fair due. I always felt that they were taking the ‘easy path’, forgoing the rigors of composition, and bypassing the ‘actual creative process’ by simply observing and clicking their subject instantaneously into being.
Of course, this is not so… A great deal of foresight, training, planning and eye for detail goes into the laborious task of creating a beautiful photograph, why then do I wrongfully discredit it so?
In an effort to cure myself of this propensity to malign the noble photographer, I have decided to walk a mile in their shoes, to feel the pressure on my instep and the pinch on my bunions, but I will do it Trouble-style.
My latest endeavor… Create photographic ‘art’ and display it to the world… Or at least to the handful of people who read my blog… To reap the accolades or suffer the criticism of my reviewers…

I will be producing a series of ‘artistic’ photo’s entitled “Drive by shootings”, the premise of which will be; that all the ‘art’ will be created with my camera-phone, and it will all be ‘shot’ from a moving vehicle [for safety sake, I will only attempt this while passenger-ing in said vehicle…]

I’m sure this will not land me my dream job at Playboy, but maybe it will serve to bring me to a closer understanding of what professional photographers go through in order to have their life work validated… At very least it may provide me with a semi-interesting post when I have diddly squat-all…



Title: Dumped

Subject: This is the dumper part of a dump truck that was dumped by the roadside… Ironically, it was dumped only a short distance from the actual dump. When I saw this lonely scene, I harkened back to all the times when I was dumped, and I was filled with grief and desolation…