Don't bury me yet!

Moving Pictures

I went today to this place called The Promise land, which is  a park and beach area.  There was a sign when we entered that said the beach was closed due to E-coli and I thought hey no big deal I wanted to picnic with my family anyway.  After several hours of being there, a guard from the park walked around announcing we could all go into the water.  I was like, what did they do with the E-coli.  I wasn't trusting it and after looking at the fish that seemed to be swimming as they were shi**ing their brains out, I thought I sit it out.  There was though, others at the park who dived into the water, I had vision of them getting out of the water missing some part of their body, and not realizing it until they got out.

While there I decided to take a stroll by myself and came upon this beautiful water fall. I thought it would be so cool to take a picture of it and then I said why the hell do I do that, I mean it was beautiful  looking at the water fall and feeling the cool breeze and water drops against my cheek, but taking a picture and than having it develop and looking at it again just wasn't to be the same, unless my picture had these amazing knobs on it where I can turn it into a moving picture and see the water fall flow again it just wasn't going to be exciting. Just a picture of water fall, stopped in motion.  You all know what I mean, how many times have you gone to Disney Land and went Oh and Ahh to the light parade and snap pictures like a maniac only to develop the pictures and than not being able to tell the difference between Mickey Mouse and Cinderella.  It's all a big blur of lights and where are all those characters that were waving at you while you snapped away.   It's like an acid trip after you get your pictures back.

I know once I went to Disney and took all these neat pictures of my friends and family.  I was excited about getting my pictures back only to see that someone took my camera and took two rolls of the light parade. WHY in the hell?  So I decided to take these pictures and place them in a book to sort of flip them quickly, one after another, so I could see the lights jumping out at me and make my own moving pictures.

So I decided unless there is someone standing in front of a water fall or a light parade float, I'm just not going to take a picture.  I rather remember that moment in the windmill of my mind.

That's all I gotta say about that (thank you Forest)

Worth a thousand words

10:04, 2006-Jul-5 .. Posted by WhenLightningStrikes

I really liked your sentiment. I started doing that too. One time the fog bank rolled into South Philly. South Philly never gets fog. Never. It was F/X type fog, low, encompassing, you couldn't see thirty feet in front of you. I literally ran to a 7-eleven and bought a disposable camera. Then I ran around the neighborhood snapping...fog. I thought it was the coolest thing. I thought I was seizing the day. I thought the pics would be magical and as proof positive as authentic sasquash photos. They were not. In fact, they were the lamest pics ever developed. I imagined some kid at the CVS passing my fog pics around to his coworkers laughing at the rube who wasted twelve dollars developing these.
Horrible, but liberating. I never took "nature" photos again. I'm even hard pressed to stand for photos anymore. What's the point? I hate how I photograph. I never get copies. And I submitted my yearbook picture (typically terrible) fifteen years ago.

There never was a stronger reason to capture in words the essence of compelling moments of your life than the whole of the celluloid slideshow.