california
Slightly Off
Throughout the entirety of my life, the view I take in has always seemed slightly off. Even in this photo, the buildings angle in strange ways, the yellow stripe is off-kilter; and yes, it was the wide-angle lens, but it was also the perspective I believed most worth capturing — mostly shadow, a little light — angles. The feeling of emptiness in a city that is far from empty.
When I played guitar during my youth, I could never keep a beat. I still can’t. I never noticed until I was in college when I tried to record a song for the first time and my dear friend, who plays guitar for a living, looked at me like I was crazy. Even now, if you catch me thumping my foot to a song, listen long enough and I’ll fall off.
Thinking back further, growing up in church, when we clapped for Jesus, my clapping would, without fail, fall away from the clapping of others around me.
It’s always been a problem.
Like with anything in my life, I try to ascertain what this small eccentricity means. The short answer is, I don’t know. And this used to bother me. I wanted to strum a guitar right, clap right, find the centered perspective of a photograph.
Then again, maybe it was never supposed to be that way. Not even the Earth rotates around the sun in a perfect circle.
Only You
There are photos that only you can capture. Photos that don’t care what kind of equipment you may have. Photos that could give a shit whether you had good light or the right lens.
I honestly believe that this photo of my wife happened because she loves me. She doesn’t look at just anyone with that kind of smile, mischievous and maybe a little tired of camera shenanigans.
I’m always asking for another shot.
I think she was a little in love with that particular day in Santa Barbara, drinking wine in a beach town that feels like, for all intents and purposes, never-ending summer. Yes, my timing here was pretty great, but if it was someone else begging for a picture, it wouldn’t have come out quite the same.
I think it’s important to take photographs of the people you love. Even if they don’t want them. There will come a day in the future, when one of us will be gone. And I’ll either have this photo and the beauty contained within all its memories, or she’ll have it, remembering her husband with a camera, asking for just one more.
In The Shadows
Truth be told, I wanted her photo from the moment she walked in to my friend’s get-together in Isla Vista, California. I don’t remember the names of any person represented in this photo, just that they were playing “Spoons”. Being an introvert, it takes some alcohol for me to interact with strangers, so I hovered in the shadows and took photographs. It sounds creepy, but social situations are hard and I tend to regress.
If given a choice, the option to blend into the wall or darkness and somehow become invisible is always the most enticing. Being seen presents difficulty for me. It feels like exposure. Defenselessness. And the resulting behavior is disconcerting for the people around me. I get it.
Here’s the thing. No one else saw this small sliver of time. And it was beautiful. Her smile in the light. Friends and strangers having a little fun. I wasn’t a part of it, and yet I was. Any expended effort, any social awkwardness that felt — yes, like suffering — was immediately worth it.
Small moments like these remind me that world isn’t just one giant shitshow. And I need to believe that. I have to know that.
This is how I keep faith. Walking in shadow just to see the light.