(no subject)

I'm back in the office in Chicago this morning, after a week away from working and twelve since I actually had to physically be at work. I'm feeling a little scattered and behind, but I'm working on it.

My hosts in Washington, savant_da_rat and ankhorite, were kind and gracious and did at least as much to make my visit an occasion of joy as did the sights I saw in the capital city. I'm so glad I got to meet them in person and I look forward to next time. There was talk, even before I left, about setting up another trip to see them again, and probably xydexx too. If I plan the next trip to bracket a weekend, we'd have time for a good long explorin' trip, as I doubt I'd want to do sightseeing in Washington proper on a weekend anyway judging by how crowded things got during the week. I'm going to write a little recap of my days there when I get the chance to go through pictures and have my memory jogged about the order I did things in. Maybe on the way home on the train.

I'm off this Friday too, for Windycon. Moira and I tested out some costuming last night and it looks like we have an outfit ready. She also has nefarious plans in store for me on Saturday to celebrate my birthday at the convention. I'm excited, and a touch nervous.

My bad dreams have been continuing on. There was one in DC that I don't really remember. Last night there was one too, which I do remember a bit of, unfortunately. ( It's behind the cut because it's a little graphic and disturbing. )

I've never had a run of bad dreams like this. The ones that involve horrible things happening in my relationships are even worse. I feel like something must be trying to tell me something at this point. But what? I'm pretty sure I'm not actually descended from a long line of Schattenjägern. barton_fender, farm_cat; anything you want to tell me?

I hope everyone's having a good Monday. Though I'm dealing with work stuff, I'm still carrying the excitement and peace of the weekend with me.

Perfect Every Time - if you wait long enough

Something I was talking to Ankhorite about this past week was the zen of photography.

As someone who thinks of himself as more of a Taoist than anything else, I have a deep love for, and awe of, the philosophy of wei wu wei - action through inaction. I've never studied Taoism in any formal sense. I've only sat zazen a handful of times. My knowledge of the subject is gained largely from the concepts in Raymond Smullyan's The Tao is Silent. It's a philosophy that jives with the way I've always intuitively seen the world.

Action through inaction is often mentioned in the context of a joke, or touched on by artsy-fartsy intellectual movies like The Motorcycle Diaries. "Let the world change you and you can change the world." (I do like artsy-fartsy intellectual movies....)

And it's directly applicable to making photos. I can sit in front of a marble and granite memorial and complain all day about all the people blocking the image I want to make, or the sun coming from the wrong place, or the cloud cover ruining my shot. Or I can sit in my little corner of the world, think about how I want to compose my image, let the sights and sounds of my location dance and sing to me, and wait. And in time, the world will align itself in just that certain special way, and I'm waiting to to click the shutter. And if it doesn't work out that day; the lighting isn't quite right, or the crowds never clear the scene, or something else goes wrong, that's ok. I can come back tomorrow, or the next day when conditions are what I want. Or if I'm travelling, and I don't have the luxury of coming back another time, well; I make the best photo I can and move on. Maybe it wasn't meant to be. Maybe I'll still be back again some day. You never know what the future will bring.

There's a website that belongs to a really amazing landscape photographer out there. When you click the link on his pictures for more info, one of the things it tells you is how long he spent waiting for the light. It ranges anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks. And that's what it's about. Being calm, staying immersed in the now, and letting the world change and align itself until it becomes what you're looking for.

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Perfect Every Time - The Chicago Union Station Underground