Category: NaBloPoMo

Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt: How often do you look back at photos you’ve taken?

Little things have contributed to finding an excuse to go back and look at old photos. For example, the wife and I decided it was time to organize all of our photos, which meant coming up with a filing system, and during the process I would find myself browsing decades-old pictures.

And I recently came into using Adobe Lightroom, and I am finding my retouching journey an education. Or should I say I am finding my self-administered retouching education to be a journey. Or something. Again, I go back to old photos, looking for ways to make some of them better.

Then there’s the urge to use websites like Flickr, 500px, and Viewbug. In an effort to pick out the best pictures among the gigabytes on my hard drive, I’ve been browsing and browsing.

It seems as if, every so often, some new innovation results in coming across pictures long forgotten. Like the time We tried Picasa, the photo library thing, and in it’s exploration we explored old pictures the program had archived.

So the answer to the question is “often” but only accidentally. I’m not wont for reflecting on memories in this way.

Today’s NaBloPoMo Photo Prompt: Color

A photo posted by Jason Edwards (@bukkhead) on Mar 12, 2015 at 10:04pm PDT

When I first saw this prompt, I thought to myself, “go find a picture you took with lots of colors in it.” But then I realized “color” can be singular, and lo, a flower I found one day next to a library.

Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt: Do you still print out photos in albums or are most your photos digital?

“Still.” Ha. As if I ever did. Nope, I’m one-hundred percent digital, one hundred percent of the time.

My pictures are for Instagram, Flickr, 500px, Viewbug, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter. I do hope that people look at them, but I don’t know what the point of printing them out in an album would be.

We only have one photo album in this house, and that’s our wedding album. We had a professional photographer at our wedding (it was a three day event, actually) but after we bought the photos it took us a year to pick the pictures we wanted and do the layout and have the darn thing printed. Now it gathers dust. Oh, for the first few years when people came to visit us for the first time, the wedding album would be on a coffee table for folks to look at. And a few people who weren’t at the wedding liked looking at it. But just once. I mean, maybe 5% of all the photos made it into that thing.

I’m trying to think what would be the point of printing out the photos at all. In another post I mentioned a cookbok my wife compiled and we printed for her sister. It has a few pictures of food I took, but I don’t know if that counts. And then there’s this service we found that will print a bunch of greeting cards for you using your instagram photos. Does that count as printing pictures.

Broken record alert: I’ve said it before, that I don’t take pictures just to create memories, and so photo albums are just not a part of my universe. I suppose when I go to someone’s house and see an album sitting there I’ll flip through it out of curiosity. But just the once.
And all of this begs the question if the pictures I take are even print-worthy.

Today’s NaBloPoMo Photo Prompt: Drama

Hard work turns (my hands) into #zombie hands.

A photo posted by Jason Edwards (@bukkhead) on Jun 8, 2014 at 9:26pm PDT

Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt: Have you ever asked someone to take a photo down? Tell us about the experience.

No, and I can’t imagine doing so, because that would mean some either too a picture of me without my knowing, which doesn’t happen very often, or while I was doing something embarrassing, which I wouldn’t care about, or while I was doing something criminal, which has never happened. Just about the only thing I can think of that would approach illegal in a context where cameras where expected would be smoking weed at a party. But marijuana is now legal in this state, and I don’t choose to partake, (since my wife can’t, as she works for the federal government) and besides, as I have said many times, I’m usually the one behind the camera.

I guess It might happen that someone in some way steals one of my photos and puts it someplace— but in that case I would just ask for attribution, not necessarily ask them to take it down. If someone was using one of my photos to promote a surly agenda, I guess then I might ask them to take it down. Or not, if I’m getting paid. I am shallow enough that just the the thought of getting paid for a photo I took is making me question my own morals.

A third example occurs to me, where I ask someone to take down a photo of someone else. Not sure if I’d bother. I think maybe I’m a little lackadaisical when it comes to this sort of thing.

Today’s NaBloPoMo Photo Prompt: Vintage

A photo posted by Jason Edwards (@bukkhead) on Apr 27, 2013 at 12:29am PDT

Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt: Do you always ask permission of the subject before you post pictures online? Why or why not?

Yes, although to be fair, since I never take photos of people, it’s not an issue. Very rarely I’ll have a photo of my wife that I think should be posted someplace, and I’ll ask her, but other than that, it’s not something that occurs.

And let’s be clear: my wife is gorgeous and should be photographed often. But the context in which I usually post things isn’t one that involves pictures of people.

That said, if I happen to be doing something social and have a camera with me and there are photos with people in them, I WILL share those photos with folks, but only privately. I try to be sensitive to social media. I try to think what it would be like if someone took a photo of me, and then posted it someplace and some ex of mine decided to use it in a voodoo ritual. Now, personally, I wouldn’t mind, because all of my exes are nice people and would only be doing voodoo in the pursuit, I’m sure, of something noble. But I can’t know that about everyone, so I only send them things in such a way that only they can see them.

Examples include a recent wedding I was at (made a CD for the bride afterwords) and a trip to the state fair (sent the friends we were with a nice e-mail).

Today’s NaBloPoMo Photo Prompt: Contrast

Boids.

A photo posted by Jason Edwards (@bukkhead) on Oct 25, 2013 at 3:21pm PDT

Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt: Free Write

John is having a pretty good day. Actually John is having a truly awful but the last few minutes have been pretty good. He’s peeling a hard boiled egg and it is coming off perfectly.

Gloria had made hard boiled eggs a few days before and John thought they were all gone. But then he was rummaging in the refrigerator and found one hidden behind a half-eaten cup of yogurt, he didn’t remember ever eating the yogurt but Gloria HATED yogurt so it must have been him.

And rummaging was the right word for it. As John remember, once, before they were married, Gloria had said, “I like you. You’re the kind of guy who would use the word ‘rummage.” And it was true. He never had, in fact, used the word, but only because it had never come up. To think of that, thirty odd years of life, and John had never had occasion to use the word rummage.

Until now. Except that he hadn’t been speaking out loud. The house was deathly silent. John didn’t want to wake Gloria, who was upstairs in bed. Every window in the house had black-out curtains. And even though she was upstairs, John still winced when the light from the refrigerator pierced the gloom.

Gloria had never said it, but if she thought of it, she would have agreed, that John was the kind of guy who would have said the words “pierce the gloom.” Although, again, he never had., But he would if it was something that needed to be said.

Took the egg out and closed it and sort of waited for his eyes to readjust to the darkness,Navigated by touch and the bits of gray light that made it round the curtains. Took that egg to the counter and gently softly quietly started to crack it. And the peel just came off.

Not all at once, of course. John’s awful day was a pretty good one but not THAT good. The peel came off the egg in a slow winding trail of connected eggs parts. Until the white thing was naked. He dropped the egg shells (shell!) in the garbage disposal (”never put eggs shells in the garbage disposal john!” and rinsed the egg off under the water faucet.

Today’s NaBloPoMo Photo Prompt: Surreal

#bored #selfie on the #bus.

A photo posted by Jason Edwards (@bukkhead) on Nov 6, 2013 at 4:44pm PST

Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt: Free Write

Anxiety is John sitting in church and suddenly realizing his t-shirt is on backwards. He’s choking, obviously, because the collar on the back part of a shirt would naturally over time become higher and the front would become lower, This is why the back of his beck is freezing to death and the front is strangling him.

John is sitting next to Candace who tricked him into coming, again, like she does. John doesn’t believe in church because God has been a jerk to John for most of is life. This morning, for example. The phone rings. He picks it up. It is Candace. She says meet me. John says okay. He gets dressed in the dark so he won’t disturb his wife. Finds clothes by touch. Starts with this t-shirt and it all goes down hill from there.

What kind of God creates a man like John, introduces him to a woman like Gloria, and then to a woman like Candace? John can’t breath.

There’s nothing he can do. He’ll just have to get up and go the bathroom and change. He stirs. Candace whispers what are you doing.

I have to go to the bathroom he whispers back in a throaty whispers that barely squeaks out seeing as how his shirt is on backwards.

Not during the homily damn it.

This isn’t the homily.

Whatever you call it.

Don’t say damn it in church

It’s my church not yours.

John unstirs. Its not like the pew is full. It’s not like it’s even a pew. Just a bunch of chairs. Most are empty. And everyone is dressed so casual. Lots of blue jeans. Lot’s of sneakers. John himself is in cargo shorts. Lots of t-shirts. None of them backwards like John’s though.

Casual, John thinks. That’s the key. He can’t take it anymore. He rips off his shirt.
At the altar the pastor stops for a moment, then continues. No one seems to notice. John can breath again.

Next to him, Candace says, you have a tattoo of a cross on your arm.
John ignore her. The pastor is saying something about mustard seeds.
That doesn’t make you better than me, she says, and gets up, and leaves.

Today’s NaBloPoMo Photo Prompt: Filter Me This

#firehydrant #hdr #fakehdr #still-life

A photo posted by Jason Edwards (@bukkhead) on Sep 2, 2014 at 11:11am PDT

Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt: Have you ever developed a crush on someone due to a photograph?

Sure I have. I’m a sucker for a pretty face. I’m sure I’ve developed many many crushes. But what’s a crush. A fantasy, an idealism. And people let you down when they step out of the photo and say something stupid or do something stupid or forget to bother to like you back.

What’s a pretty face but symmetry and balance, and what’s photography but an idealization of an idea. We say that a person is “captured” in a photo and let’s face it: only captives are fit for being obsessed with. Free people are too complicated and nuanced and shifting in their changes to compel longing for two long.
We think of our crush, and we “picture” them in our minds. They’re frozen, perfect, timeless.

Until the next pretty face comes along and we start all over again. Sometimes its years later. Sometimes its minutes. This is the internet age: I’ve been know to develop and forget crushes several times over just a few seconds.

Today’s NaBloPoMo Photo Prompt: Black and White

A #heron wading, watching at #RichmondBeach on a cloudy morning in #September.

A photo posted by Jason Edwards (@bukkhead) on Sep 21, 2014 at 9:39pm PDT

Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt: What place do you want to visit based solely on beautiful photographs that you’ve seen?

Yes and yes. On the one hand I see photos of tropical places and I think “I want to go there, read novels and do nothing.” Fortunately I’ve had the opportunity to do just that. The wife and I have been to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Puerto Vallarta, and the Riviera Maya. We’re going to San Diego next, and Costa Rica is on our to-do list, along with our fourth Hawaiian island, another Caribbean trip, and someday Miami (maybe even Cuba if that gets all cleared up in our lifetime).

Pretty much any photo of someplace sunny with sand evokes this. My wife wants to try Greece, too, and as long as it’s on the Mediterranean and I don’t have to do anything, I’ll go.

The other yes is for places I see that I want to go photograph. This is pretty much the opposite of sitting around reading novels and doing nothing else. This is hiking and walking for hours and hours. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the photography bug when we went to Singapore, Mumbai, London, and Rome. But I did by the time we got to Paris— I just wish we could have stayed a month.

So, again, any picture of amazing views, architecture, or complicated lighting makes me want to go there and see what I and my camera can do.

I have a friend who’s going to Prague, and I am soooo jealous. And while I eschew going to Australia because I like having an ozone layer above me and I’m terrified of the huge spiders there, you could probably bribe me with a few new lenses and I’d go to New Zealand in a heartbeat.

Today’s NaBloPoMo Photo Prompt: Sun Flare

#bored #lensflare #nostops

A photo posted by Jason Edwards (@bukkhead) on Mar 29, 2013 at 6:44pm PDT

Maybe a bit too much. Taken outside of the now defunk Mars Hill Church across the street from Trader Joe’s, where my wife was buying forbidden fruit.