Neville Ronan Blog

There were so many lightning pics the other evening, that when I wrote the blog the following morning, I mainly focused on just finding the images where strikes were happening.

Sometimes you get overloaded with wonderful shots that beautiful shots still pale into insignificance and end up never seeing the light of day.

So, lunch time today I went back and took a look at some of the “ignored shots” and these were mainly shots where the lightning stayed in the sky and wasn’t immediately as obvious as her flashy cousins.

The notion that such beauty could inauspiciously come to rest on the editing floor bothered me and so I hope that you find even one here (end of blog) that was worth the showing. Enjoy!

Interesting enough, last night after watching a pretty hard documentary on a mental asylum for the criminally insane in France, it did affect my outlook on life and made me question my own significance.

After a recent relationship ended, I found myself questioning whether my life therefore had now lost its significance and were my best days in my past.

It’s quite impossible to really know the answer to that question, but to answer in affirmation would be akin to accepting defeat and I don’t really accept that approach to life.

So I woke up this morning, seeking significance in my life and committing myself to the belief that there are some good days ahead.

When I opened up the office door and was caught in a stampede of three cats and five kittens, I realized the good days are here and now.

There is nothing like the love of kittens to soothe a sore heart. Such boundless playfulness and innocence in abundance.

So, by the time everyone was fed and I sat at my desk, the issue of significance began to take on a deeper train of thought.

The word significance is derived from the Latin “significare” which translates to either “indicate” or “portend”. While we have relegated the former to a timid statement of what something is trying to show us, the latter still has much of the strength and feeling of danger as it originally had.

Portend is generally a warning of something momentous that is about to happen. So significance is therefore firmly tied to something momentous.

What happens in our lives that is momentous? And in particular, what is momentous as it applies to others?

Jackie Robinson once said “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” And I firmly agree with him.

So therefore ours significance is really related to how we impact those around us, those we love, and those we care for. Beyond that our insignificance is irrelevant.

The whole world doesn’t need to know us. But those we love need to feel that they are our whole world. If we do that, then our own significance is proven and our life has real meaning.

We need to stand in the way of a bullet for who we believe in, not what we believe in. Patriotism and martyrdom is gallant of course, but the lives left behind by those who follow that path are generally hurt and sometimes beyond repair.

So, living a life that considers our impact on others, and in particular those we love and care for (skin or fur) is a better choice.

We each lose our way at times and question our value in living. But the answer is in the eyes and hearts of those around us. That is where life’s value rests!

… just a thought.

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I was on my way back out of Tampa yesterday evening after shooting a couple of friends for their portfolio.

It was only about seven thirty as I neared Lakeland and though the sun was still about 45 minutes from setting in my rear view mirror, I was driving into spurious flashes of lightning.

Daylight-ning, as I call it, is kind of interesting inasmuch as it is visible to the eye but presents all sorts of difficulties to the camera in trying to catch it. Holding a slow enough shutter-speed to catch a bolt typically wipes out any real contrast between the bolt and the surrounding sky.

Of course, by this moment in time I had already convinced myself that if it was still lightning when I got home, I would do a quick trip to Lake Parker to try to catch it down there.

And it was. So I did.

But first I slowed myself down at home by having a bowl of Frosted Krispies in an attempt to give the sun enough time to go down. What I didn’t allow for though was that the skies are still quite bright for twenty or thirty minutes after the sun dips below the horizon. So I still managed to get to the lake in near total brightness.

There was a nice old dude (as opposed to a not nice old dude, like me) sitting in his car watching the storm on the other side of the lake. As I set up my camera and began to shoot, he tried to convince me that this was all going to turn into a tornado and that really I shouldn’t be standing out on the edge of the lake.

By the time it got really wild and the wind picked up off the lake to perhaps 40 or 50 mph, he had convinced himself that it wasn’t safe and so he drove away.

I resolved that if it was going to develop into a tornado, that I would likely see it coming across the lake at me and know to move. And if I did get hit by a bolt of lightning, I very likely wouldn’t even know about it. There are much worse ways to die.

So I convinced myself that my duty lay with me by my camera’s side, hence the set of shots at the end of this blog. There are even a couple of daylight strikes which I was kinda pleased with, but my favorites are probably numbers 6 & 7.

Anyway I hope you enjoy.

I did enjoy. I had an absolute blast being down there and as the storm raged all around me, I stood my ground and was there over 2 1/2 hours in total.

The enjoyment of being there was far more than the enjoyment of the pictures, which is really what got me thinking today about the whole train of thought for this blog.

I remember when I got my very first shot of a lightning strike, how thrilled I was with the image. I ran out to the world and showed everybody.

Whereas these shots, which are technically much better, left me with a slight sense of dissatisfaction overall. Don’t get me wrong; I am pleased with how well I captured these particular shots, but overall I just I needed more.

More of what, I hear you say?

I am not even sure, to be honest. Maybe an explosion or two, or cell towers on fire, or maybe even that tornado crossing the lake right at me.

Any one of those would have probably had a wow effect and created a level of satisfaction with the shots, that somehow is missing.

And this is my point, there is a level of satisfaction or joy that we get with the first time we achieve something, that we almost never get to experience again. That first kiss. Our first drive. Baby’s first taste of ice-cream.

There is a problem with our brains that turns almost everything good we do into an addictive process, to where we always look for something better.

It creates a level of imperfection within everything we achieve … at least in our own eyes. Aaah if only it was sweeter, or longer, or brighter, or whatever.

Others are quick to point out how perfect whatever we did is, while we denigrate the same achievement and dismiss the praise.

“I can do better” is the phrase that rings about in the back of our minds.

Perfection is an illusion and we will never achieve it in anything. So to seek it, only serves to keep us in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction.

And dissatisfaction leads to unhappiness and therein lies to problem.

Some of us are happy to be unhappy, happy to come up just a bit short. Because we use it to drive ourselves forward onto bigger and better.

“I can’t get no satisfaction” as the Stones sang is the anthem of this feeling. And I have had in playing in my head all day.

Aiming for better is always admirable and we are well-served to do so. It provides internal motivation that generally speaking moves us forward in life.

With “better” we can acknowledge the improvement and be happy for our achievement.

But aiming for perfection will never create happiness. We will under-acknowledge our achievements and focus on our shortcomings rather than our achievement.

Always remember, it is an imperfect world, folks.

… just a thought!

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Wonderful evening yesterday … dinner, drinks, and sunset gazing with Vanessa. One of those lovely evenings with a friend that reminds you of what the “normal” used to be.

As I drove to meet her, the storm clouds gathered and lightning became quite violent and I was so pissed that on this occasion, I hadn’t brought my camera.

I forgot about it all until I dropped her home and on the drive home, the skies became electric. It was a perfect evening for photographing lighting and it was as if the gods were pointing fingers of lighting and laughing at me for having left home without a camera.

At first I consoled myself that this was FL and this was likely not my only chance, for having missed it.

But then I noticed that subconsciously, I was driving faster and thinking that maybe I could get home, grab a camera, and run back out to the ball fields to try and get something before it all stopped.

It looked promising as I pulled onto Walker Road, just a mile from my house … the skies were still alight. But the gods saw my excitement, realized I was close to realizing my goal, and decided to send the rains.

And boy, did it rain. The heavens opened … just on me …. nowhere else on the planet was experiencing rain. Just that one little section of Lakeland, where Neville was.

But if they thought that would defeat me, the gods were sadly mistaken. I ran in home, grabbed a camera, back to the car (completely soaked, by the way) and drove down to the ball fields.

In the pouring rain, I set up the camera and tried to manage the settings. But the lens was getting wet and though I draped a little facemask over the camera itself, the lens and I were taking a soaking.

Undaunted I started shooting and stayed there for an hour as the storm moved to the distance and i tried hard to capture some of its glory. I had to repeatedly try to dry the lens and was actually into the last twenty minutes of it all when I realized I had set the aperture incorrectly and effectively under-exposed all the initial shots.

Such is the life of a storm chaser, I guess.

I hope you like the little collection that I have added here at the end of the blog. Won’t win any prizes, but some are still cool captures of what Mother Nature served up last night.

There is a trait most of us Ronans have. It begins with an “s” and end in “tuberness” and it was very much evidenced in me last night.

Obstacle after obstacle were put in my way and I refused to lie down and be beaten. The only element of failure I experienced was the under-exposure and that was by my own hands, so I can live with it. And I will watch for it next time, should I find myself in a hurried moment in the rain trying to do a camera set-up.

And that is the thought that played around in my head today as I started to look through the images.

I could see where my failings undid my efforts but I was nonetheless proud of the perseverance and my unwillingness to accept defeat.

We each experience life that is obstacle-ridden at times. No matter what our intentions, there seems to be a list of reasons why we are unable to do something or shouldn’t even try.

But in truth, we should ALWAYS try.

There is no shame in failing. And, in particular, when we have tried against all odds.

Those are the moments when we can actually take pride in our failures and wear them as a medal in our war against the gods.

Wars are waged in many ways throughout our lives and we don’t always win them. I remember seeing my grandfather’s medal from the Great War of 1914-1918 and feeling a sense of pride in him having played his part in it.

That he was on the winning side was a pure fluke, because he was not born in Germany. We don’t control our birth … the gods decide where we first open our eyes. So the men that were born in Germany and fought for their side should have felt equal pride in being a part of such an event.

So, I guess what I am trying to say is that our pride from any event or moment cannot be based on whether we win or achieve. The end result is very likely not directly linked to our efforts alone.

Thus, our feeling of pride has to come from our having tried.

Last night’s war with the gods may not have given me a win, but it gave me a victory.

And I go through my day today, all the better for it.

… just a thought.

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So, last night was spent over at Jax’s home. She, Cassandra and I were in a creative planning mode. Throwing our ideas on the table for some future shoots together and drinking some wonderful alcoholic concoctions that Jax conjured up.

Not that our minds needed lubricating; Jax is my experimental muse and together we have been on a journey of image making for several years. Cassandra is a natural artist with such a fertile mind and she was the catalyst of creativity for our new ventures.

The end product to the night was a friendship further cemented on the back of mutual loves and dreams together with some firm plans to attack a low tide shoot in Tampa Bay one evening over the coming weeks.

It was one of those evenings where you are so engaged that you wind up going to bed four hours later than you normally do and then crawl out the following morning nursing a hangover that has nothing to do with the alcohol, but everything to do with the lack of sleep.

At 5:30, I wanted to stay in bed but all the kitties needed to be fed and released outside, so I wandered downstairs painfully, washed dishes, fed them all, left the door open and then crawled back upstairs for that one more precious hour.

Anyway, rewind a little … during the evening the conversation drifted on to little creatures and how we share a common love for all little creatures and after Jax introduced us to her gorgeous Bearded Dragon (Ugin), we ended up with Daisy, her Ball Python snake just chilling with us for the rest of the night.

Daisy is stunning and very calm with being handled and so she just happily hung out on Cassandra as we continued our round-the-world-conversation.

I have attached some pics of her at the end of this blog. Hope you enjoy.

It was really this morning, as I started to go through the images, that I began to think about the topic of this blog. To us, Daisy is a beautiful, soft, warm-to-the-touch creature that is such a gift to be allowed to interact with.

And yet to others, snakes present an instant recoil response that is typically related to fear or anxiousness.

While recoil reactions to any creature are understandable when related to past experiences, many of them are not. Many of them are simply aversions picked up by watching other peoples’ responses and mimicking them.

Children aren’t born with fears, they develop them often based on their parents’ or siblings’ reactions.

And it is not just unfair to the poor little creatures that end up shunned, but it is also a missed opportunity for the recoilers as they never experience the wonders of engaging with a creature that is different from the family pet.

While I am not a huge fan of spiders, I have worked to overcome it and will almost always try to figure out a way to re-home one if he wanders into my world. And this past week I had a wonderful meeting with a large moth on my driveway that needed rescuing and I managed to get her safely into the old pump house. Not to mention the lizard that Coco dropped on my lap while I was working on the PC the other day. Poor little guy was scared but I managed to help him escape to the freedom of the overgrown yard.

Each of those creatures are very different little lives and coming in contact with them broadens your mind into the world that they live in. You begin to think what is best for them, safest, most comfortable.

You begin to see the world through their eyes, a little. And you recognize the fear they must feel when they see your gorgeous furry little kitty coming towards them.

Looking at the world through only our eyes is akin to going through life with blinders on. You end up missing out on so much understanding that is out there simply waiting for you to look and see.

There is no medal that gets pinned on your chest for knowing so much about the fellow creatures that share this planet with you, but your heart grows with each new understanding and you become a more complete person.

Ultimately you become a creature of the earth, which is the next step up from being simply human. And your interest and concerns extends outside of your immediate surrounds to include all peoples and creatures … yes, even those that you used to recoil from.

Daisy just lay there on Cassandra, coiling into a ball (hence the name, Ball Python) on her chest and tuning in to her heart beat. She was peacefully part of our little group and made no attempt to get away from us, regardless of how scary or ugly she found us.

She understood that for some unknown reason, these strange large creatures with arms and legs wanted to interact with her, and being the better person, she allowed it.

So next time you see something that makes you recoil or want to run away, don’t. Just stop for a moment and imagine what that little creature is seeing in you and how it is simply trying to get on with its existence.

Share the love!

… just a thought.

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Morgan just bought me a couple of neat glass pieces so last night I took them off down to Tampa to see what they could do for me.

There is a glass sphere and a glass cube and the sphere is just less than 4 inches in diameter while the cube seems to be just less than 3 inches wide. They are both high clarity glass specifically for photography, so I had a thrill of anticipation as I headed out.

I wanted it to be dark, so that I could rely on the ambient city lights and with all the lovely changing colors at the riverwalk, that is where I headed to.

I am very much a morning person, so it takes a lot to get me out of the house after dark. By then, my 5 o’clock start in the morning is normally having its toll on me and my energy is failing.

It was also going to be a journey on my own, so the only motivation really was the new “toys” to play with and perhaps something new to learn.

The sphere had a tiny little tripod with a suction cup that holds the sphere in place and the cube had a 1/4 inch hole drilled into it, so that I was able to use an extending arm from the top of the camera to secure it in place.

The riverwalk is very much the center of night-life these days in Tampa. At least for all the good looking folk. It was teaming with life last night; beautiful guys and girls of all shapes and sizes, holding hands, cycling, scootering, roller-blading, whatever.

It was very much the place to be.

Nobody seemed to mind that I was kneeling down in the middle of this traffic with weird looking glass things immediately in front or dangling from my camera. Some people even stopped and asked and were in awe at what the camera was seeing.

I have attached a little collection of images from the shoot at the end of the blog, so I hope you like some of them!

I left downtown after an hour or two, very happy and confident in what I had shot. I also felt happy to be there as a little part of a vibrant city, full of happy humans, all living their lives fully on a Monday night.

But what really caught my mind as I drove home was the whole experimentation aspect of what I had done.

Photographic experimentation is how photographers stretch themselves and become better at their trade. It comes with a sense of ignorance of what will really happen, so there has to be a willingness to fail in what you are doing.

I was proud of myself for taking the risk and learning something new in the process. And maybe one day I will actually understand what I am doing when I try to take certain pics.

But really the experimentation that I want to address here, was bigger than just photography.

When we are young, everything is an experiment. It is how we learn. From the moment we first try to stand up on our two feet and take a step, we learn what works and what doesn’t.

When we become older, we often relax back into the mode of repeatedly doing the same stuff. This is the stuff we have already learned and are happy with. It might be our favorite restaurant, or our favorite place to watch a sunset, or a favorite pastime that helps us unwind after our day.

Somewhere in adulthood, we transition from knowing nothing to thinking we know everything and ultimately settling on everything we think we need to know.

It is such a shame to limit ourselves in life’s experience, just because we have found a comfort zone. Life is so much bigger than any ability we have to learn, so there is always something new to learn, no matter our age.

I remember my Mam and Dad learning some internet basics in their late seventies and eighties before they both died. It wasn’t something they needed to know in order to run out their lives. But, it was something that they wanted to know and so they did.

Keeping our bodies active as long as we do now, is clearly understood as being important in terms of quality of life. But so too is keeping our brains active. And there is no better way to keep your brain active than to always try to learn something.

We have to be willing to abandon our comfort zone and reach for something that may be difficult to understand, but the rewards are immeasurable and very much worth the stretch.

I remember my Grannie many years ago moan at how we spend all our lives accumulating knowledge and then at the end it comes to nothing because it fades with you when you die. But I disagree with her because the knowledge we gain is to enhance the experience of how we are living. Our ability to venture along different roads on our journey through life.

Grannie’s journey included driving in the very first automobile that was on the roads of my home city, she lived through the Irish Civil War, freedom from British tyranny, both world wars, and ultimately Ireland becoming part of the European Union. Her journey included learning decimal currencies in her later years as the prior pounds, shillings, and pence disappeared. So her learning was very real and very much a part of her life’s experience.

Our own life’s experience is very much shaped by the events that happen in our lifetime, but also by how we involve ourselves in everyday life. If we choose to do only the things we are good at, then our world becomes very small.

I guess what I am trying to say is try to look at your life last month and ask yourself what new thing that you learned. And then look at the coming month and ask yourself what you might learn.

Stretch your mind and live a more full life.

… just a thought!

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While my intention last night was to shoot lightning, there wasn’t any. And so, I had to settle for a crappy ol’ sunset.

OK, it wasn’t really crappy but I was annoyed at myself because the previous night when there was lightning, I completely screwed up my shoot and so this was supposed to be my make-up session.

But sometimes (oftentimes actually) things don’t necessarily go according to plan and so I found myself all set up for a lightning shoot, down at Picnic Island, without a storm cloud to aim for.

In truth, it was still a lovely hour or two and I am so glad that I made the trip. The sky gave me some lovely yellows and golden to play with and the little smattering of people on the water gave me some accessories to my shots.

So, all in all, I shouldn’t complain. Oh wait, I do have one complaint. Right at the end when the sun was doing its most evocative transition below the horizon, Miki Mosquito and all his family, as well as the Noseeums from next door came out and decided to attack me. They were relentless.

That any of those final shots came out in focus is testament to the fast shutter speed and not my steady hands, because I was being dive-bombed and hurting in a stressful way.

Anyway, I do hope you enjoy the collection at the end of the blog … they show the whole transition through colors quite well and while there aren’t really any reds on show, it was still worth capturing.

So, I drove away quite happy with the evening, all told, and as I was driving home I began to think about how being alone and being lonely are very different things.

I’ve mostly been alone in life for the past few months and while there are times that translated to loneliness, last night wasn’t one of them.

Being alone, meant that I had to add some energy to the momentum needed to get in the car and drive to Picnic Island. When it is just you, it is always easier to talk yourself out of doing something.

And being alone meant that other than through this particular means, I wasn’t able to share the awe of the evening with someone. There is no doubt that when I have had someone with me at times like this, the company enhances the colors, the freshness of the air, and the general feeling of a wonderful moment.

But that doesn’t mean that the moment loses everything when you are alone.

Learning to appreciate your own company is a valuable skill and allows you to savor moments for what they are. There is no pining for anyone to be with you and your own enjoyment becomes a strong enough flavor to create happiness.

I find that when you focus on whatever the event is (a sunset, a book, a movie) then experiencing it alone is still enjoyable. It’s like drinking a milk-shake without the whipped cream on top … the flavor is still the same and it is still your own taste that decides whether you enjoy it or not.

Some people convince themselves that they need somebody always and that their happiness depends on others. But in truth, our happiness comes from within.

People in this mode often bounce from one bad relationship to another because they can’t stand being alone and they equate it to loneliness that begets sadness.

But I don’t believe in that approach to life.

I think you have to love yourself. Not as much as the dotard does, obviously, but enough so that when you are alone that you can still breathe, still enjoy, still smile. You don’t have to be a narcissist to enjoy your own company.

When we convince ourselves otherwise, we do ourselves a real disservice and it can lead us in so many wrong directions.

I suspect at the end of the day on our deathbed, if we look back over our lives, the one person we were with most throughout it all, is ourselves. If we didn’t love ourselves, then we managed to live a life with someone we didn’t love. What kind of life would that be?

… just a thought!

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I’ve noticed a trend over the past week or two when I go to put out the buffet for the raccoons, possums, et al.

There is a genuine increase in the gathering that occurs, waiting for my arrival. I first noticed it a while back with the birds. Cardinals set the pattern first.

On evenings when I was a few minutes late, I would often get a cardinal up near the kitchen window looking in at me while I was getting the dishes ready and he would chirp at me through the glass. It was a definite “you’re late” chirp and I felt the pressure.

Over the subsequent weeks, they were joined by blue jays and squirrels, occasionally at the window but mostly just sitting patiently in the trees near where I set out the first stage of food and throw the bread.

On a typical evening there are five or six cardinals, two blue jays, a few smaller little birds, and a couple of squirrels … all waiting patiently for my arrival.

But then I noticed this past week or two that there is a raccoon who has joined the early audience and he waits patiently for me to set down the food and step away so that he can be there for the early bird special.

Yesterday evening I got to talk to him for a few moments and he didn’t run away. He just patiently waited for me to be done with the “wah, wah, wah” sounds so that he could get on with the eating.

That “wah, wah” by the way is my Charlie Brown reference for adult voices.

Anyway I managed to get a few quick pics of him up to where he chose his first beefaroni and then I left him alone. They are at the end of this blog and I hope you enjoy.

As I got on with the rest of my evening, I began to think of the patience shown by all these little creatures and how we humans could learn something from them.

“Patience is a virtue” was the old saying and I remember hearing that thrown at me several times growing up. But in many ways it is a lost virtue.

We have become an instant gratification race where everything needs to happen immediately if not sooner.

Fast food, instant winners, movies on demand, are all symptoms of an unwillingness for anybody to wait for anything any more.

I remember the first time it ever really slapped my in the face; I had just moved to America and was shocked at the practice among some of my new friends that their tradition was to open a Christmas present the night before Christmas. Now to those of you that do such a thing, you may not see how crazy that is to people that actually wait until Christmas to open their “Christmas” presents.

I am somewhat surprised that there isn’t an Easter egg hunt the night before Easter, or trick or treating going on October 30th.

Instant gratification fits with a culture that has focused on productivity to an extreme. Where every minute is critically important and therefore needs to be shortened.

So we go through a drive-thru so as to not have to wait in line for something. We use personal shoppers and curbside pick up at Walmart so that we don’t have to waste our precious time doing it. We use the fast pass at Disney so that we don’t have to wait in line for a ride.

We zip home in traffic determined to shorten our drive by a minute here and there, risking life and limb with questionable speeds and driving practices.

And then what do we do with all this precious time we have saved along the way?

We sit on a sofa in front of the TV and vegetate.

So, though we describe our actions as a time saving mechanism, the reality is that we are simply impatient. It has nothing to do with actually saving time, because saving implies you are planning on using it for a greater purpose at some later moment.

Generationally speaking we are evolving into a more impatient race, as we pass on technologies and behaviors to our children that makes them more impatient than us. Remember dial-up internet anybody? Explain that wait to a 16 year old.

I don’t know where we expect it all to end. Do we just blink our eyes and whatever we want is immediately there? Is that the end point?

And as if that whole trend isn’t bad enough, we have somehow evolved into thinking that it is ok for some people to get things faster than others. Premium services allow for the rich to access the internet faster than Po Folks, allow “special” people to bypass queues at airports, allow faster shipping of purchases they just have to have today or tomorrow.

There used to be a general belief that if something was worth having, it was worth waiting for.

It was a belief that placed some value on patience. It recognized patience as a virtue.

Virtue in itself is rapidly becoming a forgotten value, unfortunately. We don’t seem to seek it in others any more and I am not sure we even aim for it within ourselves.

There is a lot to be learned from these little wild creatures … perhaps if we try, we might rediscover some of our lost virtues.

When we allow virtue to become a lost value to us we only breathe life into that famous quote by Plato: “Knowledge becomes evil, if the aim be not virtuous.”

… just a thought!

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I was out gathering the dishes mid-morning from last night’s furry revelers and came across this lone mushroom on my “forest-floor” back yard.

He was all alone, from what I could see, but stood there bathing in the sunlight and showing off his delicate beauty to anyone that might observe.

There was no vanity … he was just doing what mushrooms do and reaching for the sky in an attempt to shout out his praise to the heavens.

I put the dishes down and grabbed my camera (don’t I always) took these few shots and then just admired him for a moment. Then I picked up my dishes and went back about my day.

Three hours later, I remembered him and went back to see how he was doing. He was bent over, dying on the cold ground beneath him. A few feet away from where he stood, I saw his cousin whom I had missed earlier. He stood there, shriveled and brown, and clearly in distress over the fall of his kin. A lone tear rested on his fading face and I felt sorry for him.

I felt sorry for them both. They were taken from us so young.

At the end of the blog are some of the shots I got … just three hours apart.

And as I walked back to my desk, slightly crestfallen, a sadness came over me. Sad because it is very possibly that I was the only one to have seen this lovely little guy over the entire duration of his life.

He lived his life for just this one moment in the sun and then ashes to ashes, returned to whence he came.

Perhaps his beauty shone out to a passing butterfly, who herself was destined to live a short life…. though not as short as his. Or perhaps his cousin briefly spotted him in the distance and managed to wave to him before he fell. We will never know.

How long we live is largely a function of the type of “thing” we are. From hours to years, to possibly a century. While it is happening, it may feel of substance but in the grand scheme of things, we don’t even appear as a dot on the timeline of the planet we live on.

So the relevance of our longevity is minimal. Though some people make it their mission to be remembered after they are gone. They build monuments, statues, walls, determined to write themselves into the history books.

For what?

Do we really think there is an immortality to be found in the page of a history book? There is every likelihood that a person will be remembered for an atrocity as much as an act of greatness. Hitler will likely outlive us all.

So, the pursuit of immortality is a fools game. But more importantly it can become in itself a purpose and therefore distract away from the love we can share and experience with those with whom we share our here and now.

My little mushroom guy shared some of his moment with me, this morning and however unintentional, I now add to his level of immortality by showing his picture here. But it was surely incidental to his real purpose in life.

It would be nonsensical to imagine that he stood there waiting for me to appear with a camera. Unless of course, he was a prophet among mushrooms. And maybe he was … who am I to cast shadows on a prophet.

But far more likely is the story that he was born this morning just before the sunrise, grew to maturity before the hard heat took hold of the day and then bade farewell when his time was up.

And did the world come to a stop when he fell? No.

It will not stop for anyone. Rich or poor, famous or unknown, loved or unloved. The world will continue to turn.

We put such value in our lives because we know one day it will be replaced by death. Some go to great lengths to extend the quantity of time they have here, without deference to the quality of the time here that they have.

My suggestion? Learn a lot from the mushroom … he was born, he lived, he died. So do we all.

Enjoy the middle bit while you can!

… just a thought!

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Threw the camera into the car last night as the day darkened into night and headed off downtown Tampa again. Last weekend’s fiasco was still fresh in my mind, so I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a little bit of fear in the pit of my stomach as I returned to the scene of such a miserable moment.

But I was determined to try the blue-hour, long exposure shots regardless. That was my original intent last week before the evening fell apart.

The skies themselves were absolutely not cooperating, with thick, heavy cloud all over the bay area. So the blue aspect wasn’t very likely to oblige.

The blue hour, by the way, is that hour immediately after sunset when photographers get to play with the camera just a little and extract some remaining tinges of blue from the sky before it turns to black.

So, from the outset I knew that the clouds were definitely muting part of the effect I was looking for. But that was OK. It was important that I get back in the saddle, so to speak, and put a better memory around a downtown visit.

I found the spot I felt would give me the best vantage point for some light trails and while of course downtown traffic is somewhat minimal these days, I still got a few I was happy with.

They are here at the end of the blog and I think my favorite is the very last one. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

Taking these type of shots by hand is definitely not the way to go. They most definitely should be tripod mounted because of the long exposure. But I wanted to get down close to the puddle (for reflections) and the tripod was keeping me too high above it.

So there I was kneeling in a puddle, hands resting in the water, trying to get some shots as traffic rolled by. Oh the lengths we go to when we are doing something we enjoy!

I just hope none of the people who saw me cracking eggs in the rain the other evening were driving by. They don’t need any further evidence.

I even tore the front of my shoe in one of my efforts to crouch lower. So, by the time I was heading back to the car with my wet jeans and broken shoe, I must have looked a pitiful sight.

But regardless of how I looked, I was genuinely happy.

Whether the pictures came out or not was secondary because the real enjoyment was in the trying. I was lost in my own happy spot, oblivious to the traffic or the passers-by, untroubled by wet knees and hands, unbothered by the clouds.

The world may have been turning, but I didn’t notice. For almost an hour, my world stood still.

There were no thoughts of work-stresses, personal issues, pandemic worries. The world was completely shut out.

And as I drove home last night, that was the thought that played out in my head.

The importance of being able to find our happy place.

We all need a happy place. It is the place where serenity takes over and your world is a beautiful place.

We can sometimes be so busy in life that we forget we even have such a place. But, when we do that, we do ourselves a disservice.

So if it’s been a while, why not go to your happy place this week?

Finding time for our happy place is an essential part of soul-rejuvenation. Your best soul-mate is your inner-self and you will find them there, waiting for you. Smiling.

We don’t all have the same happy place. If we did, my puddle would have been awfully crowded last night.

Yours might be in a good book, resting your head in your partner’s lap, or standing in a river, waiting for the fish to bite.

It doesn’t matter where you physically are, because the real happy place is inside your head. You take it with you everywhere you go and it is just waiting for you to open the door and let it out for a while.

This is why they say that true happiness comes from within. And it is why relying on others for your happiness is a shallow puddle. One without depth or reflection.

So, go on … get your knees wet this week.

… just a thought!

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If you haven’t already figured it out yet, I am a bit weird, to say the least. But don’t judge me on the back of the images in this blog. There is a perfectly logical explanation.

You see, I was on my way back from Walmart yesterday, laden with groceries. Carrying them up from the car to the house, I chose the “lazy man’s load” as my Dad used to say. Twelve Walmart bags in your hands while trying to fumble with a key in a door-lock is a recipe for disaster and sure enough one fell.

And no surprise, it was the one with the eggs!

I mean seriously … there were eleven other bags and not of them had something that would break from a small fall. But, as Murphy forecast many moons ago, it will always be the bag with the eggs.

When I climbed back down from the ceiling and inspected the bag, nine were fine but there were three casualties. One was really quite smashed and the other two a little bit so.

Now, if I had wanted fried eggs or an omelette, it wouldn’t have mattered but boiling smashed eggs for an egg-sandwich would be rather messy, to say the least.

So, I put them to one side as a little idea began to play out in my head. The old saying “you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs” ran around in my head and given that I am in the middle of trying to create a series of smalls ads, I came up with a plan.

I hopped back in the car, smashed eggs in their box and camera by my side and raced off down to a Publix shopping center just down the road.

For the next few minutes, there I was at one end of the parking lot; an old man squeezing eggs in his hands in the middle of the rain. If there were men in white coats around, I was definitely in trouble. They would have had all the ammunition they needed to take me away.

Anyway, here are some of the pics I got at the end of the blog. I know, I know. I already told you I was a little weird.

I did end up with one that played out well for the ad, so the end purpose justified the strange situation I found myself in. And before anybody accuses me of utter waste, you should know that just off camera under my hand, they all oozed back into the egg box itself. And they were happily eaten by some possums overnight. So, nothing was wasted.

So really the whole point behind this blog was not so much to impress anyone with my manly hand crushing some jumbo sized eggs.

No. What occurred to me was the significance of that old saying about omelettes and eggs.

I looked up the origins and, believe it or not, it was attributed to François de Charette, who was a lieutenant general in the anti-republican army that was defeated in France in 1796. At his point of execution he was asked how he could justify so many deaths because of his actions, wherein he conjured up the quote that you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

He was either quite a philosopher at 32 or perhaps just a simple chef, but his words still survive today and have been used in many situations across the world.

My simple interpretation of these words is that in order to achieve anything of significance, some sacrifices are inevitable. And that is what I wish to talk about here.

Many of us go through life wishing and hoping for success in something, yet doing little to secure it. Whether it be a career, a financial purpose, a love, an experience, a talent … whatever it is, it nearly always has a cost associated with it.

If something took no effort to secure, then it likely has no value. Anything of value will likely require us to extend ourselves in order to achieve it.

So, on one hand I look at people who go through life feeling entitled to things and I shake my head. Much of youth culture is such, but inevitably they seem to grow out of it. Life’s experiences tend to educate them in the principle of earning achievements.

On the other hand, I see others that are so focused on achievement to where they barely notice the sacrifices they are making or worse still the sacrifices of those around them. These people step on others and even themselves in order to achieve their goal. And again, I shake my head.

While achievements are important, it is more important to create a balance in our lives. A balance that forces us to examine what we are working towards and what we give up in the process.

When we give up those that love us, we fail them and we fail to find that balance. When we give up our souls, we fail our very humanity.

There are so many examples and I am sure we have all witnessed many along the way. A couple of years ago an ex-sibling sold her mother into a nursing home for $32,000 so she could buy more gin and adorn her twisted body with fur coats.

And look at evangelical Christians, selling their very savior in order to put a pussy-grabbing molester in the White House for a more conservative supreme court.

In both instances, they each explain away that sacrifices have to be made. They agree on the premise that “the end justifies the means”.

And I disagree violently with that.

The end never justifies the means. The means must be able to stand in the daylight and justify itself.

Isn’t it ironic that in almost all instances where sacrifice is freely given, the sacrifice is done by others?

Every now and then, we see the opposite; that moment where someone sacrifices themselves for someone they love. It can be on a grand scale, where they jump in front of a bullet, or on a less obvious level where they forego their own comforts in order to put their kids through school.

For everything in life, something has been sacrificed and in order for us to understand its value, we need to recognize the sacrifice.

Such recognition not only helps us respect the achievement but it can also remind us of the balance required to truly live a happy life.

Happiness is not in the achievement but in the balance.

… just a thought!

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