An interview at PetaPixel with one of my photography heroes and inspirations, Thomas Hawk.
My favorite quote:
People have asked me over the years if I’d like to do photography full time and my answer has always been no. Part of working as a professional photographer means that you may end up having to shoot things that are not your passion.
I totally agree. Photography is a hobby. Getting paid is nice, but I’m always nervous it’ll take the fun out of one of my passions.
Moving Through Vegas from davelawrence8 on Vimeo.
Las Vegas II: Terrible’s Revenge, with Chris Driver, Andrew Krukowski, and Keith Coates.
Beautiful series, promoting a service I adore.
And that’s the thing: you wonder whether this is an Instagram-sponsored web series. If it is, it’s not obvious. If it’s not, well…good for them.
Sometimes you need to just do stuff, and see how it turns out.
(Pilgramers – Episode 1 (Official))
Have a feeling I’m going to do a lot of damage with this thing.
Thanks to my co-worker Bobby, this little doozie – a workhorse of an SLR that was produced for 21 years – came at just the right time. I’ve been pseudo-shopping for film cameras (especially after messing around with an old Minolta).
The Pentax K1000 takes some might-fine photos, too. Can’t wait.
Instagram feels like my one-off way of sharing photos. I see something I like, I post it everywhere (well, Twitter and Facebook), at least once a day.
But now I find that (a) I’m constantly taking Instagram photos and (b) I have a backlog of photos to use. What to do?
Simple: post two photos a day instead of one. Except that one will be reserved for Instagram users/friends only. It’s Instagram-exclusive.
We hypershare everything these days. We have the ability to post something once and have it appear everywhere. By doing this, no one social platform gets exclusive anything. Part of the attraction of certain social networks, however, is their unique strength: Flickr for photos, Twitter for random thoughts or links, Facebook for information no one cares about.
For Instagram, it’s in-the-moment photos. A photo log of your day. More and more I feel that some of those photos should stick to Instagram, and only Instagram. That’s what makes Instagram special. If someone isn’t on Instagram, they don’t get to reap the benefits.
Plus I get to clear out my catalog of Instagram photos, and my friends on Instagram get to see stuff no one else gets to see.
When I tell people about my on-again, off-again meditation practice, I share a National Geographic story about the science of the mind. In the article, neuroscientists wire up Buddhist monks:
For the past several years Richard Davidson and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been studying brain activity in Tibetan monks, both in meditative and non-meditative states…When Davidson ran the experiment on a senior Tibetan lama skilled in meditation, the lama’s baseline of activity proved to be much farther to the left of anyone previously tested. Judging from this one study, at least, he was quantifiably the happiest man in the world.
That last sentence had a big impact on me. Here was a kind of proof that meditation rewires the brain – in a good way. In a measurable way.
So I tried it. And when I did, I started giggling.
It was January 2006 when I first tried meditation. I downloaded a podcast, sat in an uncomfortable, half-hearted lotus position, closed my eyes, and listed to the instructor. Then, laughter. Uncontrollable, tear-inducing laughter.
After that first time, I didn’t laugh anymore. But boy, what at first impression.
Then it happened again when I tried a chakra meditation, concentrating on specific centers of the body. There again, right when I started to focus on the heart and throat chakra, I started giggling like a fool.
Today it happened a third time. This time, it was thanks to a simple message on a simple website playing a simple song (courtesy of Ben Brooks). The music started, my shoulders slumped in relaxation, and – what do you know? – I started laughing uncontrolably.
What’s going on here?
It turns out I’m not the only one. In fact, this behavior is expected and common.
For me, I think there’s a bit of self-hypnosis involved. It’s almost like there’s some magic affecting my susceptible brain, and what I feel is the release of tension. Not being used to that feeling, I start laughing. It turns out it doesn’t even take meditation to kick start my giggle reflex. It could be something as simple as soothing music.
This is all evidence in support of what I read years ago in that National Geographic article – that meditation, or a relaxed state, changes the chemistry of the brain. What I feel, as a result, is a release of tension. And that feels funny.
But good. It feels really, really good.
Road trip music, perfected. (The Tragically Hip – Gift Shop)
Goodbye, bike. on Flickr.
I remember the time I had to abandon my bike at the Rockefeller Library at Brown University.
During my New England trip, in 2008, I had high hopes for that bike. All the parks and battlefields I’d visit were perfect for a bike, I thought, so I stuffed it into the hatch of my Suzuki Aerio.
Stuffing it may have been a mistake, however, because the damage was evident immediately. The frame was bent sometime during the trip, and that made the wheel terribly wobbly – making the bike ride like some demented shopping cart.
I only rode it a half mile in Providence, Rhode Island, before giving up. I parked the bike at the library, went inside for a water, came back out to say my goodbyes, and left it there. With any luck, the university would consider it a donation from some stranger.
That incident was one of many I had on that trip: a parking garage booted my car wheel, my knee ached, I got hit on at a rest stop, I stayed at some sleazy motel in New Jersey.
But it wasn’t a bad trip. It was a great trip filled with bad luck.
If I could pick any song that said, “This is why I want to play guitar,” then “Rocket” would be it.
The original version was magic to a 14-year-old me. Still is. And it’s so gratifying to hear Billy say that this song is the Plutonic ideal of Pumpkins material. Especially when all the weirdness hit the Pumkins, and I looked back on Siamese Dream with longing, thinking, “If only they could do that again.”
Reissue? Purchased.
In a world where everything is becoming virtual people seem to become more and more disconnected from physical media and while that has its upsides there are also the faults of such a way of life. This leads consumers to long for something physical to connect to when enjoying things they take interest in.
Agreed. That’s why I still buy CDs and print my photos.