today is my mom's 62nd birthday. she's still in a coma. my dad and sisters have decorated her room at the hospital and are likely playing christmas music for her. i've spent a lot of time the past day or so remembering some of the earliest moments of my childhood. my oldest memories all involve my mom and/or my dad. i'm so blessed to have the parents that i was born to. i remember sitting in the back of our white w/ burgundy interior mercury couger while my mom sang elton john and carpenter's songs while she drove away from the day care i hated going to because i wasn't ready to be grow up and be away from her yet. i remember my parents hoping to convince my sister holly and me to eat our spinach at dinnertime by demonstrating the amazing power one gets from consuming green-leafy vegetables. dad- after downing a plate of spinach- pushed our ford grenada down the street while mom sat in the driver's seat steering with the car in neutral. i don't think holly and i were convinced. i remember my first bee sting when i was four or five. i sat at our dark brown kitchen table crying with an ice cube on my arm and dad at the stove boiling a pot of water to pour on the hive that was next to a sewer grate in our yard. "we're going to get those bees" dad kept telling me in his mean voice, and he did and he let me watch from a distance as he got revenge on the bees that hurt his son. i think my earliest memory in this life is of my mom holding me on her lap in our living room on a sunny, summer day while she sang "you are my sunshine" to me. i remember feeling so incredibly sad when she'd get to the line "and please don't take my sunshine a-way" because the thought of someone taking me away from my mom was too much for my 3 or 4 y/o emotions to handle.
it's about as official as it's going to be- i'll be moving home in a few weeks once i've recovered enough from my surgery to get rid of my possessions and clear out my house. had my follow-up appointment with my surgeon yesterday. he took out my stitches and remarked that i'm healing well. the disc that he scraped a portion off of will take 3 months to close-up and heal. he's understandably concerned about the packing and moving i have to do over the next couple weeks, but also is sympathetic to my need to get home and be with my family. i have a lot to do before then, and am not in much of a mood to do any of it- so i think the easiest route (i like easy) is to get rid of just about everything i own. my main objective is to have everything done by the end of thanksgiving weekend, and then have 3 or 4 days to enjoy my last days in alaska and reflect on my sciatic ordeal the past 6 months and on my 5 years here as a whole. i feel it's very, very important that i get a few days of down time before i arrive to what is awaiting me at home so that i'm not leaving one traumatic episode and entering another, sure-to-be-long-lasting one immediately afterwards. my hope was to be able to drive home the week after thanksgiving, using the 5 to 6 days behind the wheel as that time to decompress and reflect, but it would cost almost $1000 more to drive than it would be to fly and i just can't justify spending that right now.
we're just finishing the 4th snowstorm in the past 6 days here. i've never seen so much snow this early in the season, and normally i would be jumping out of my skin excited for it and would be out xc skiing until 10p every night. now it just makes it more difficult to keep my walkway clear and to get my truck out of the driveway.
while the snow covering everything is pretty, it seems to drown out my photographic motivation. everything is monotone- like we're living in a black and white world. i tend to be inspired by lots of saturated and contrasting colors. a macro lens is useless this time of year unless there's frost on the windows. i find myself lately taking out-of-focus shots like the one above. maybe it's reflective of my current mental status? although i'd have to say that i'm more focused now on what i need to do and what has to happen than i've been the last couple years. the only alaska wildlife i seem to see lately are the ever-present magpies and black capped chickadees. i'd give anything to have a lynx, or better yet a family of lynx, come through the yard like they did two and a half years ago. i am really going to miss the wildlife photography opportunities that i'll be leaving behind here. if i had to pick one subject to photograph the rest of my life, it would be wildlife- specifically alaska wildlife. it's a different process and experience than shooting landscape or close-ups of flowers or dew drops. those types of subject allow you the luxury to compose a shot, take a look at it on the lcd screen and retake a couple more with the camera settings tweaked if necessary. it's pleasant, but doesn't give you the rush that stumbling upon a bear with cubs or a family of lynx does. often the wildlife doesn't let you compose a shot- they've usually seen you and usually want to get away. in a chaotic few moments you're trying to ready and steady the camera, check your settings (if they're not preset beforehand for the conditions you're expecting), compose and fire away as fast as the camera will allow you to take them. sometimes the experience lasts only a few seconds. a good example that resulted in one of my favorite photos i've ever taken was on an early spring morning hiking this year up the mchugh creek trail along turnagain arm. graeme and i had gotten to the trailhead at 5:30a on a sunny cool day to beat the crowds. i was moving slowly because my sciatica had started a couple weeks earlier, but at the time thought it was a severely strained muscle that would eventually get better. we were heading uphill on a patch of scree about an hour into the hike when i spotted the tail-end of a lynx running away from us about 20' to my right. my camera was still in my backpack, but within a second or two i had it out and ran through the short bushes towards the direction it went. after about 50 yards i came to a ravine and scanned up and down for him, and found him standing on a log on the other side of the ravine looking back at me. i was out of breath and shaky from sprinting over scree and through the bushes and could barely hold my camera still. it reminds me of the biathlon event in the olympics- xc skiing for a certain distance with a rifle on your back, arriving at a target and after just skiing a mile or two then steady yourself and overcome your racing heartbeat enough to be able to aim and fire your rifle at the target. there was enough time to take about 10 shots before the lynx took off out of view, and luckily one out of those 10 wasn't blurry. the whole experience lasted less than 30 seconds, with most of that spent running after him. it is one of my favorite shots, and was in a good mood for days afterwards. it's the same feeling as hitting a 30' jump shot in the closing seconds to win a basketball game. it often isn't something you have time to plan, compose, or even have a conscious thought about while it's happening. more than anything it's about luck, and if you get one shot to turn out then it makes your day and you remember why you love photography in the first place. it's not a feeling you can get from photographing flowers or sunsets.
time to get out of bed and resume the process of moving out. happy birthday, mom. i hope you wake up soon. can't wait to see you in a few weeks.
it's about as official as it's going to be- i'll be moving home in a few weeks once i've recovered enough from my surgery to get rid of my possessions and clear out my house. had my follow-up appointment with my surgeon yesterday. he took out my stitches and remarked that i'm healing well. the disc that he scraped a portion off of will take 3 months to close-up and heal. he's understandably concerned about the packing and moving i have to do over the next couple weeks, but also is sympathetic to my need to get home and be with my family. i have a lot to do before then, and am not in much of a mood to do any of it- so i think the easiest route (i like easy) is to get rid of just about everything i own. my main objective is to have everything done by the end of thanksgiving weekend, and then have 3 or 4 days to enjoy my last days in alaska and reflect on my sciatic ordeal the past 6 months and on my 5 years here as a whole. i feel it's very, very important that i get a few days of down time before i arrive to what is awaiting me at home so that i'm not leaving one traumatic episode and entering another, sure-to-be-long-lasting one immediately afterwards. my hope was to be able to drive home the week after thanksgiving, using the 5 to 6 days behind the wheel as that time to decompress and reflect, but it would cost almost $1000 more to drive than it would be to fly and i just can't justify spending that right now.
we're just finishing the 4th snowstorm in the past 6 days here. i've never seen so much snow this early in the season, and normally i would be jumping out of my skin excited for it and would be out xc skiing until 10p every night. now it just makes it more difficult to keep my walkway clear and to get my truck out of the driveway.
while the snow covering everything is pretty, it seems to drown out my photographic motivation. everything is monotone- like we're living in a black and white world. i tend to be inspired by lots of saturated and contrasting colors. a macro lens is useless this time of year unless there's frost on the windows. i find myself lately taking out-of-focus shots like the one above. maybe it's reflective of my current mental status? although i'd have to say that i'm more focused now on what i need to do and what has to happen than i've been the last couple years. the only alaska wildlife i seem to see lately are the ever-present magpies and black capped chickadees. i'd give anything to have a lynx, or better yet a family of lynx, come through the yard like they did two and a half years ago. i am really going to miss the wildlife photography opportunities that i'll be leaving behind here. if i had to pick one subject to photograph the rest of my life, it would be wildlife- specifically alaska wildlife. it's a different process and experience than shooting landscape or close-ups of flowers or dew drops. those types of subject allow you the luxury to compose a shot, take a look at it on the lcd screen and retake a couple more with the camera settings tweaked if necessary. it's pleasant, but doesn't give you the rush that stumbling upon a bear with cubs or a family of lynx does. often the wildlife doesn't let you compose a shot- they've usually seen you and usually want to get away. in a chaotic few moments you're trying to ready and steady the camera, check your settings (if they're not preset beforehand for the conditions you're expecting), compose and fire away as fast as the camera will allow you to take them. sometimes the experience lasts only a few seconds. a good example that resulted in one of my favorite photos i've ever taken was on an early spring morning hiking this year up the mchugh creek trail along turnagain arm. graeme and i had gotten to the trailhead at 5:30a on a sunny cool day to beat the crowds. i was moving slowly because my sciatica had started a couple weeks earlier, but at the time thought it was a severely strained muscle that would eventually get better. we were heading uphill on a patch of scree about an hour into the hike when i spotted the tail-end of a lynx running away from us about 20' to my right. my camera was still in my backpack, but within a second or two i had it out and ran through the short bushes towards the direction it went. after about 50 yards i came to a ravine and scanned up and down for him, and found him standing on a log on the other side of the ravine looking back at me. i was out of breath and shaky from sprinting over scree and through the bushes and could barely hold my camera still. it reminds me of the biathlon event in the olympics- xc skiing for a certain distance with a rifle on your back, arriving at a target and after just skiing a mile or two then steady yourself and overcome your racing heartbeat enough to be able to aim and fire your rifle at the target. there was enough time to take about 10 shots before the lynx took off out of view, and luckily one out of those 10 wasn't blurry. the whole experience lasted less than 30 seconds, with most of that spent running after him. it is one of my favorite shots, and was in a good mood for days afterwards. it's the same feeling as hitting a 30' jump shot in the closing seconds to win a basketball game. it often isn't something you have time to plan, compose, or even have a conscious thought about while it's happening. more than anything it's about luck, and if you get one shot to turn out then it makes your day and you remember why you love photography in the first place. it's not a feeling you can get from photographing flowers or sunsets.
time to get out of bed and resume the process of moving out. happy birthday, mom. i hope you wake up soon. can't wait to see you in a few weeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment