I failed in my attempts to get someone to shoot with me last night, so my choice was to sit on the sofa and vegetate in front of the TV or go out by myself. So I chose the latter.
There are moments where you have to grab yourself by the scruff of the neck and lift yourself out a stationary position. And it isn’t easy. There is a lot of temptation to just stay put. Laziness is a tough master.
In fact I remember from my early physics days, encountering Newton’s First Law of Motion, which begins with the phrase “An object at rest, stays at rest …”
Now, that man understood TV-induced laziness even before TVs existed!
But much like the continuation of that same law, once I got in motion, I stayed in motion. And I was all the happier for it.
My hopes were to see a sunset and the venue was Picnic Island down in Tampa. I wasn’t sure if the park was going to be open or not, with all this COVID stuff, but I needn’t have worried.
And in typical Florida fashion, either social distancing was yesterday’s news or I arrived on the Trump-supporters excursion day. The idiots were out in full force, hugging, shaking hands, crowding together, and breathing in each other’s waste fumes.
There are a couple of pics that show what I mean in the shots I am uploading at the end of this blog.
But these are merely a digression, as the main thing I wanted to experiment with was the effect of a glass orb within a sunset shoot. Morgan has given me a small glass globe, with the world etched into it and so there are several shots here that shows the wonderful effects it has within a photo environment.
Mostly it did what I thought it would do … it provided a sharp focal point with a picture and as expected, it turned the image it was capturing, upside down. I remember those bits from my physics classes.
But there were a couple of very surprising optical effects that I didn’t even remotely think of.
For example, there was one shot (yes, I uploaded it) where the orb became almost entirely opaque due to internal diffusion. And for a reason that I haven’t yet figured out, it had two areas on the surface where it showed very strange reflections of things off to the side of me (trees and such). Check that one out … it is soooooooo weird! (the third pic)
And the second thing that I didn’t even see until a few moments ago, was one shot that looked perfect except it had an inner-reflection of the whole sphere within it. Like a circle within a circle. So very strange! (it’s the second pic)
By now you have likely figured out that I like to experiment, so last night’s success meant that my efforts to get off the sofa were more than rewarded, in my book at least.
And so this is what evolved into my blog thought for today. Resting, while important occasionally, should not become a default option for us in our lives.
There is a whole world out there (and no, I am not talking about my little glass orb) that provides us with every reason to get our asses off the sofa and do something that makes the moment notable.
I try very hard to stick with my simple belief that there will be plenty of time to rest when I die. But for now, there is a life to be lived.
I know it isn’t easy. There are times when we feel sapped of our energy by whatever the day has thrown at us. It happens to us all. But there is a second wind out there, just waiting to be caught, if we will only put our bodies in motion.
Last night’s reward was everything I had hoped and then some. But I am not foolish enough to think that will always be the result of a second effort. Sometimes we fail and some are just a dud.
But there is accomplishment in having put in the effort. Having tried, is something in itself. And there is fairness in the expression, “well, at least I tried”.
That expression is often sounded as some form of consolation, but in truth it should be stated as a statement of self-praise.
Trying is often the difference between winning and losing, and between living and existing. we all exist (until we cease to) but not everyone lives.
And even if you are betting the farm on a second chance at life somewhere up in the clouds, that still doesn’t give you the right to waste the life you have down here on planet earth.
Vegetating should be left for lives that have green leaves sprouting from their limbs. We evolved to have legs and feet and so it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that we are supposed to move.
My inner-child last night was back in elementary school in Ireland, looking at light through a glass sphere. My mind danced with each strange reflection or diffusion. And my soul soared with happenings that it couldn’t yet understand.
Even if you don’t have a glass orb to play with, get off your ass and try looking at the world through a different lens today. It is such an amazing planet and yet so difficult to discover from the comfort of a sofa.
