A Universal Shove
I went for a fairly long walk this morning (especially considering how cold it was) in an effort to try to wrap my brain around everything that is happening in America right now. The fires, the economy, the incoming administration and the state of social media platforms that many artists and small businesses rely on for marketing. Hours could be spent frantically and dramatically hammering away at my keyboard about how I feel about our government as a whole right now. As the kids say, I feel a certain way about it. But…as a result of my long walk, I’m not going to take that route. That road is a five lane super highway in full blown grid lock traffic at rush hour packed with pissed off road ragers. Hundreds of thousands of seething citizens and back country influencers are already lined up to tell anyone who will listen about how fucked we all are and how this all screws them. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the energy or the vocal ability to shout over all that noise. Feels wildly pointless.
Does this all suck? Hell yeah it does! It’s absolute, maddening chaos out there in the jungle.
Am I going to let it stop me from creating and sharing my work? Absolutely. Not.
As I was walking today I was surrounded by a literal and very dense fog. Seemed pretty on the nose to be honest. The path I was walking on is located on a butte in SE Portland and it juts up just high enough in elevation that as the low lying inversion shifted through the valley the rising sun started peaking over trees through the clouds. It was eery and ominous while simultaneously calming and beautiful. The moment gripped me. I was grateful I wasn’t staring out at wildfire smoke like so many people I know have been the last week. I was grateful to be in a cloud.
My camera is always with me these days for these exact opportunities. A couple quick snaps later I knew I had the shots I wanted. Then the question immediately cut the line of anxious thoughts in my mind “Am I going to share this on Instagram?”.
If you are reading this you are likely already aware I’ve made it publically known that I plan to leave all Meta based apps later this week for a number of different reasons that I simply don’t feel like taking the time to explain further. There are a thousand other articles written by better and more well paid writers than me floating around the internet abyss that could give you a pretty solid idea about why I’m leaving. The question in my head still needed an answer. Do I post these photos there?
Yes. Yes I will, and I did, but the follow up question became how do I really want to share my photography work moving forward? YouTube, without a doubt, is going to become my new best friend for video content, but what about the photos themselves? How do I convey my momentary thoughts and musings like I did in IG captions for others to read? At that moment the sun poked through the clouds again almost like a lightbulb illuminating a thought in the space between my ears.
I’ll start actually blogging like I’ve repeatedly told myself I would a million times!!!
Boom. Here we are. Is this thing on? Can anyone hear me?
Will I have the same engagement and interaction? Definitely not at first, but let’s be honest with one another the engagement on Meta platforms has been unbelievably atrocious recently. Like yelling into the Alvord Desert in the middle of winter. Unless you feel like sinking a metric shit-ton of money into their ads that is.
So why not here? Why not double down on my own website and share my work here? It’s a bit old school and I kinda love that.
To wrap up this thought purge with a nice little black bow…if you wish to continue seeing my work like you did on IG or FB, then sign up for my email list and check out my blog posts. It’s going to be a regular party here in my little corner of the interweb now and I’m really looking forward to sharing it with you. Thanks for being here and following along.
As always, Much Love!
Captured with a Nikon Z6 + Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8
