Adventures

Adventure awaits at every turn. Started out the day in ER at Methodist getting treated for the six, what I still believe were, spider bits in both of my armpits. Doctor says they weren’t but I say they were. Anyway I hurt much more when I left than when I went in. Tomorrow morning is the remaining cataract surgery. After that I do hope that the adventures will come fewer and farther between. It’s been a roller coaster of a month.

Went to an excellent talk at NWHPC tonight. Dion McInnis gave a talk on What You See Is Not What You Get. Lots of memorable lines that I would like to talk about. But to boil it down to the essence you have to get yourself into the photograph and not worry if other people do not see what you see. You do that by using photographic technique not to mimic what wins ribbons, or what someone else is doing. You do it by understanding the language of the photography, what the technique means, and knowing how to manipulate that technique in order to convey the message you intended.

The talk emphasized a lot of the things that causes me problems with camera clubs in general. It also emphasized the problem I have with VAA and telling other people how to make their art. I would really like to find a group or start a group to simply discuss photography—no competitions, no rules. But to do that the photographer has to be able to talk about what they are doing photographically and few can. Best I can tell, few photographers have any idea why they are photographers or what they want to say through their photographs. And here I swore at the beginning of the year that I was no longer going to care about such things.

I really miss the group in Wichita Falls that met weekly in Theo Gresham’s ham shack. I am a much better photographer today than I was then but that will probably always remain the highlight of my foray into photography. I miss you Skinny, Theo, Phillip and all the rest. I have greatly enjoyed the course set at those meetings. Thank you all.