No Picture Day

Well, here I am approaching the end of another day in which I haven’t taken any pictures. I thought about it this morning, but I didn’t want to do yet another mediocre morning nude. And I knew I’d be going out today (for an extra day of auditions for the show I’m doing), and I thought I might go a little early and stop someplace to take a picture of something interesting. I didn’t go early, and though I took my camera, I didn’t see anything that inspired me to take a picture.

And I just don’t feel like taking any pictures tonight. This happened last night (because I had a shoot with a model scheduled, but she canceled), and I took some pics, but they weren’t all that great. And I’m actually trying to work on some music this evening. 

So, I am officially declaring this a “no picture day”. It’s the first no pictures day for me since 6 weeks ago, when I decided I’d try to take pictures every day. 

6:30 AM

Another early morning and I’m up for no good reason. No job I have to get to; no kids to get ready for school. Just me, awake. 

It feels too early for much of anything. Too early to work on music, or even watch the netflix. I don’t want to make much noise, though it wouldn’t disturb anyone. I have no family here, no roommate, no lover. No one to bother or be bothered by. Just me, alone. 

There are neighbors, but I don’t think they’d notice. I never hear their TVs, or their talking, or their anything, really. But it seems too early for noise. So, I sit here at the computer, mostly just staring. And drinking crappy coffee. Awake but tired. My mind isn’t going full steam yet. Just me, not quite alert. 

It’s a sort of limbo. I wish I could call it a prelude, but that would suggest something is going to happen. That’s not the feeling at all. In fact, it feels like nothing will happen. Nothing keeps on happening. Nothing and nothing and more nothing. Just me, not quite alive. 

So, I’ll get another cup of coffee, I’ll have another mediocre day, and I’ll make it through another year of wishing for some unknown, unspecified something. Half the time hating the world, and half the time hating myself. And mostly feeling there’s no point. No love. No joy. No anything. Just me, not quite dead. 

“Connect, George, connect!”

So, I was just searching online for pictures I like—you know, inspiration, or whatever. And I was purposely trying to find non-nudes. I’ve found tons of nudes I like. The thing is, I tend to find nudes so much more appealing. Or I have a stronger reaction, I guess. It’s not necessarily a sexual reaction (sometimes it is, but not always). And obviously not all nudes do I find appealing. Some are quite appalling.

It’s a little bit of a challenge. The more pictures I look at, the less I find really interesting. There’s certainly stuff that’s nice, or appealing, I guess, but not really interesting.

I always liked nudes. Well…for a long time. (I wrote a little about that before: “childhood myths”.)

Anyway, I just find nudes appealing, both as a viewer and as a photographer. It’s easier for me to find nudes that I like, or that I think are interesting. But, while I definitely enjoy doing nudes, I’m totally willing to do non-nudes. I just wish more people would pose for me, clothed or not. 

I have this suspicion that people who know me, who’ve seen at least some of my facebook posts of my photography, maybe think that I only do nudes. Or maybe that I really only want to do nudes, and somehow that’s my ultimate goal. Perhaps that idea was suggested by the fact that mostly what I was doing for a while was nudes, self portraits. So maybe that’s all some people have seen of my photography. And maybe they think that if they modeled for me, I would be nude. 

Well, I wouldn’t be nude. You could ask the few people who have posed for me. And my actual goal is to make some nice pictures, maybe some interesting pictures. Pictures that I would want to look at, that people would want to look at. And, as I said, I like doing nudes, but I do other stuff too. 

Maybe people I know haven’t seen much of my more recent stuff, or my non-self-portraits. Generally when I post a link to facebook these days, I don’t get many views and no comments—whether it’s this blog of “rants” or my naked blog or my general photography blog or the newest blog that I set up with mostly people who’ve modeled for me. 

Hmm... Maybe I have too many blogs. 

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Photography is often a lonely endeavor. Even if I have someone model for me, that’s only the first part—an hour or 90 minutes of actually interacting with that person. Then they leave, and I have to select and edit the photos. That takes longer than the actual shoot—just me, at my computer, looking at images, playing with contrast and color and all that, making decisions about what looks better this or that. I don’t mind that part of it, but it would be nice to have at least had that hour or so working with another person. Then the result would be pictures I took of another person, instead of just me or some building or trees or whatever. It would be a connection of sorts. 

Maybe it’s something else. Maybe people aren’t reluctant to model for me because of anything to do with nudes. Maybe people just don’t like me. Actually, not maybe; I’m fairly sure about that one. Some people like me well enough, but I’m quite certain that tons of people don't know exactly how to take me, or just don’t care much for me, or just outright dislike me. 

I used to be nice and quiet and shy. I got over that. The nice sand shy part, anyway. I’m still quiet sometimes, especially when I don’t know the people I’m around, or if they’re talking about something I know little about. But I’m certainly willing to tell people what I think even if it’s not nice.

It’s absolutely clear to me that I’m bad at connecting with people. I was never great at it, but it’s harder now than it used to be. When I was in college, people were open to making friends. But now I'm middle-aged. People are just busy with their own lives, and if I’m not already part of that, they just seem to not have much room for me. Okay, fine. But I think that my desire to photograph people is partly an attempt to connect, to participate in the world that I often just don’t feel a part of. 

Another failing attempt to be human. 

don't take the blue pills

I bought these blue pills a while back by accident. I meant to get just acetaminophen, which is a basic pain reliever. It’s what’s in Tylenol. But I was in a hurry and got the wrong bottle. 

Just to be clear, they are NOT Viagra.

These are acetaminophen plus diphenhydramine, and they’re for night-time pain relief. Diphenhydramine is what’s in Benadryl. It’s generally used for allergies and motion sickness, but it can make you relaxed or make you sleep.

The day that I bought them, I was on my way to a rehearsal. I felt a massive headache coming on, so I stopped at a drug store and grabbed these. I was back in my car, heading to my rehearsal, opening the bottle, and was about to take several (3 or 4 probably). But the color threw me. Normally, acetaminophen tablets are white, not blue. So, I looked more carefully at the package and realized these weren’t what I’d thought.

I don’t recall whether I stopped elsewhere and bought a regular, non-drowsy pain reliever, or if I just asked someone at rehearsal. But I did not take the blue ones. I may have that night, or sometime shortly after. I’ve tried them just a handful of times, most recently last night. I had a headache yesterday from around 4 or 5 pm until I went to bed around 9:30. I never go to bed that early, but the headache was pretty bad.

Well, I’m not gonna take these anymore. They just make me feel awful the next morning. Often I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, and after taking 2 of these blue pills, I still wake up in the middle of the night, but I feel really, really drunk—uncomfortably drunk. I’ll feel really tired, but not able to get back to sleep for a while. Then, in the morning, I feel like crap. 

I also just realized this morning, while looking at the bottle, that they’re past the expiration date. They’re probably okay to use. They helped me get to sleep last night, and didn’t seem to work any differently from when I’ve used them in the past. But I just don’t like how they make me feel. 

model request

I got an email today from a young woman who I photographed this past summer. We did a bunch of different pictures in one day. It was the longest shoot I’ve done. There were some implied nudes.

Well, the email she sent earlier today said, “i have nude well implied photos on your blog and since i will be a mother soon i was wondering if you could please remove them from your blog???”

I will remove them. But…I don’t know what being a mother soon has to do with any pictures I took of her. Seriously. It’s not like they were crass or explicit or demeaning in any way. They were implied nudes. Not like porn-tastic crotch shots.

Seriously, I do not get it.

There was another, more recent, model who was not okay with a few of the best pictures I took. Apparently, they showed too much skin. These were also implied nudes. And the weird thing is that the pictures she didn’t want me to post didn’t show any more of her than the ones that she gave the okay.

I do not understand.

Maybe I should abandon my policy of not posting pictures that a model hasn’t approved. Maybe if I were in a position to hire models, then I’d have a different attitude about it. It’s just my feeling is that they’re doing me a favor. But, I guess I’m helping them too, whether they’re an aspiring model who’s trying to build a portfolio or a non-model who likes being in photos or wants some cool, interesting pictures of themselves.

Well…anyway…I just don’t get some people’s attitudes concerning bodies. Especially with pictures that they already said were okay (or, in the case of the second model I mentioned, agreed that they were great pictures). The mom-to-be thing just seems to me as if she’s saying, “it was fine when I was just a single young woman experiencing the world…” or whatever, “but now I have to feel ashamed of my body and my choices because there’s a future baby that could be upset one day if, somehow, they stumbled upon these pictures on some little photography blog that most of the world has never seen.”

Sad. 

new calendar

I’m thinking about calendars this morning: years and months and all that.

I think we should make a change. Obviously, this isn’t going to happen anytime soon, as we humans tend to get stuck in thinking, “This is how it is, therefore it was always this way. Or the way it was before this way just didn’t work very well. And in either case, the way it is now is the way it should always be, because it just makes sense, it’s just logical this way.”

Yeah, we humans are pretty stupid sometimes.

So, I think we could a year that’s made up of 12 lunar months. There are lunar calendars, like the Hebrew, Chinese, and the Islamic, which is why various holidays and “Chinese New year” seem to “move around”. But the calendar most of us are familiar with—the Gregorian calendar—is a solar calendar, which is why we have months of different lengths and leap years.

Well, back to my lunar calendar idea. Now whether those months are based on the approximately 28-day orbit of the moon around the earth, or the approximately 2 or 30-day phase cycle of the moon, or some mix of the two, does not matter to me.

Either way, you’ve got some “extra” days at the end of the year—somewhere between 5 and 30. So that end of the year extra time could be the winter “holiday season”. Everyone could get some extra time off, throw parties, special entertainments, end-of-the-year close-out sales, whatever.

I suppose one might argue, “What about people with birthdays at the end of the year?” Well, if there’s a standardized calendar, in which each month has the same number of days (28 or 29 or 30) each year, then the amount of “extra time” at the end of each year should be approximately the same, varying from year to year by a day or two at most. So, most people would still have a birthday every year. A small percentage wouldn’t, just like leap year babies in our calendar. They’re considered to be a year older every year, and they probably even celebrate it, even though it might not “technically” be their “birthday”.

One might also argue, “Our current Gregorian calendar works pretty well, so why change it?” Well, first, do not fear change. Second, the current winter “holiday season” that we start at or even before Thanksgiving (not even winter yet), has gotten completely ridiculous. 

So, if we thought of the “holiday season” as these extra days—especially if people got extra time off from work, school, etc—some of the stress and tension of our winter holiday season (you know, “Christmas”) might be significantly lessened, and those who dread the holidays might even be able to avoid all the annoying, overly happy, peppy, Christmasy people.

I remember at some point in school, high school probably, reading or being told about some ancient culture that did this. I don’t know what culture or cultures this was. But at the end of every year, the king of chief or maybe the priests or astronomers declared some number of extra days. The number varied a little each year, but the result was calendar correction.

Does anybody know what I’m talking about, anybody remember learning that? It just always struck me as really neat idea—a little extra time at the end of the year. Who wouldn’t want that?

Of course it’s not extra time in the sense of adding time; it’s just a different way of thinking about calendar time.

Thoughts? Anyone?