Happy Birthday, Zen Master Hobbs!
On this date in 1999, an important Zen Master was born. Zen Master Hobbs. He was born in Plano, TX on October 31, 1999. 8 years ago.
He has taught me much during his tenure as Zen Master and hopefully will continue to teach me for many years to come! So, here’s a hardy and very public happy birthday to you, Hobbs!!!
Journies
Sometimes when you win, you really lose, and sometimes when you lose, you really win, and sometimes when you win or lose, you actually tie, and sometimes when you tie, you actually win or lose. Winning or losing is all one organic mechanism, from which one extracts what one needs. Rosie Perez – White men can’t jump
Heading for lower ground. Destination, sea level!
Most of the time, I don’t think about my journey, I just participate in it; however, sometimes I do look at it. Of late, the journey has been chaotic. Mind you, it is chaotic only because I think it so. What I mean by that is that by not accepting certain events, I consider them chaotic because things are not organized the way that I want. Like Rosie Perez said, winning or losing is all one organic mechanism… It’s all relative to your point of view. Events are events, neither good nor bad, right nor wrong. These events are life situations, not life itself.
I believe that life offers thousands of opportunities for us to grow. Let’s call them tests. For each test that you ‘take’ you can either pass, where you have some growth and learn something about yourself, or ‘fail’ where you wallow in self pity because life did not go the way that you expected it to. The Tao Te Ching frequently uses water as a metaphor for having a fulfilling life: Water seeks the lowest point (humility). Water does not attempt to move obstacles, but simply goes around, over, under, or in the presence of cracks, through.
Recently, I think that life has presented me with a number of very large opportunities to grow. It is said that those within your family are your best teachers. They will test you in every area in which you need to grow. Need patience? They’ll test it. Need to be less ‘right’. They’ll test it. At this period in my life, I feel that I am constantly in a state of ‘final exam’. Lots of my beliefs are being tested, as well as ideals. Sometimes I feel as if I’m passing with flying colors, other times, failing miserably; however, the most difficult thing is learning to stay in the moment. Staying in the moment means just that. You deal with only what is happening right now. You learn to be an observer to your thinking mind and just ‘be’. When I feel anger, sadness, or some emotion descend upon me, I know that it is the old thinking mind trying to assert itself, so I just let the emotion come, most times I don’t act on it, but just observe it. There are those times when I do let it take over, but those are lessening. What is stress? Stress is the desire/thought that you should be somewhere where you are not. You’ve not accepted ‘what is’.
Obstacles? Around, over, through, or under.
Living in your mind, that is in the realm of thought, is troubling. There are always thoughts of should (against reality), could (possible future), would (possible better future), might (future), ought(against reality). The past and the future, frankly, do not exist. Everything else is thinking. Thinking that life will be better when … or life was better when, totally missing out on what is happening right ‘now’. When I win the tournament, I’ll be happy … when I get that new car, I’ll be happy … when I get published, I’ll be happy, when I was 22, I was happy, etc. Being present takes work. While sitting here typing this post, my mind is babbling on about “shouldn’t you be starting work … going for a walk with Hobbs … out taking pictures … taking a shower”. I let it have its say and then continue on with my typing, fully in the moment. 
There is only the eternal moment.
I look at my dog, Hobbs. He is a Zen master. He lives only in the moment. He doesn’t think about that he didn’t get to go for a walk yesterday, nor hope for one tomorrow; however, when I pick up the leash, it’s like his first time ever going for a walk. He’s excited!!! When we go for a walk he approaches it with so much excitement and exuberance. He always greets the same people, or new ones, like he’s never seen a person before, with complete and absolute love and trust. He knows no strangers. He is in tune with the flow of life. I learn a lot from him. I’ll keep watching. I probably won’t sleep as much as he, but I can still learn a lot when he’s awake! He’s a master teacher. He has days when he just barks at everything, especially when I’m trying to sleep. On these days, I learn patience. I can accept him for who he is, but don’t have to keep him in the bedroom. I don’t get mad at him, I just evict him! I still love him, but can sleep better without the barking!
Lastly, I’m really starting to understand the above movie quote. If you’ve not seen the movie, Rosie’s boyfriend, played by Woody Harrelson, said that for me it’s simple, when you win, you win, and when you lose, you lose. However, he later came to realize that, after he had satisfied his ego and won a basketball tournament that he had lost his girlfriend. At this point he understood that he had won, but really lost. Getting things your way can be like that. It’s a temporary, shallow victory sometimes; however, if you had lost, you might have won something vastly more important.
The journey continues … Thanks for reading!
Welcome Rain
Well, we only managed about 1 inch of rain for the entire two days that it rained. This still leaves the river levels down about 15 inches.
I saw this leaf on my patio, on the mat on the way into the house. I thought that it looked nice and was a good representative of some much needed and very welcomed rain. It certainly wasn’t enough to get us out of Exceptional Drought status, but it was enough to put a little green into the otherwise brown grass. Heck, there were even people cutting their lawns this weekend.
It’s kind of funny, the other day at work, after it had been raining for a scant few hours, I heard someone say: “I hate this weather! I’ll be glad when the sun comes out again!!!”. I wonder if she would have had that feeling if the lakes had gone dry! I enjoy sunshine too, but I love the rain.
The rain was not enough to stop a few joggers that I saw in the park, nor was it enough to stop one crazy photographer from standing in the light rain with his gear taking pictures of those same joggers! 
When it started raining, I actually went outside to feel it … and it felt good!
WordPress upgrade
I’ve just upgraded to version 2.3.1 of WordPress; however, there seemed to be a few issues with some of the plugins that I was using and
I did get this fatal error after upgrading:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare get_terms() (previously declared in /home/…../wp-includes/taxonomy.php:370) in
/home/…../wp-content/plugins/Similar_Posts/similar-posts.php on line 807
I’ll leave this breadcrumb here for other people who may need the solution. There is a method in similar-posts.php called get_terms(). Unfortunately, WordPress 2.3.1 has declared a method with the same name. Getting around this is as simple as opening similar-posts.php and doing a search and replace on get_terms and changing it to get_the_terms. That’s it.
As a developer, I’ve always found it slightly annoying when someone goes to a news group, asks a question, figures out the answer but never comes back to give the answer.
I’ve found another incompatible plugin, comment subscription, so until that’s ironed out, you won’t be able to subscribe to comments. Also, my comment notification is not working. Oh well, I guess that this is an upgrade.
Updates:
16:00 – Comment notification fixed: WP 2.3.1 includes a new file in the wp-includes directory. The name of the file is pluggable.php. This is supposed to allow certain WP features to be replaced by a plugin, one of which is the feature sends comment e-mail. No longer, it seems, do the fields in the general settings have anything to do with the mail. By default, the mail goes to wordpress [at] paullesterphoto [dot] com. I had no mail or forwarder for this. Setting up a forwarder ‘fixed’ the problem.
If you see anything out of sorts, please let me know. blog [at] paullesterphoto [dot] com
Note: If you are planning to upgrade, there is no going back. I upgraded from 2.1.3 to 2.3.1. There are database changes which make going back not much of an option. Also, the upgrade.php drops several tables, which may cause some of your plugins to fail. See wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php for detail.
Overall, other than for some fixes to security issues, it wasn’t worth the upgrade. I didn’t gain anything valuable from it except learning how to get around the issues.
Paul
Here comes the sun …
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it’s all rightLittle darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all rightLittle darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all rightSun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it’s all right
It’s all right
-The Beatles
Nope. I was never a Beatles fan, but the song just seemed to fit the picture.
Finally, a bit of rain.
Autumn Rain
All of North Carolina has been in the category of Exceptional Drought. This is the National Weather Service’s highest category of drought. We hadn’t had measurable rainfall in many weeks or perhaps months. Our normal summer, which we usually saw a bit of rain almost every day, was dry and very hot.
Well, Wednesday night, it finally started to rain, thanks to some tropical storm that rolled in from the Caribbean. As it hadn’t rained in such a long time, I wanted to get out in it and photograph. I felt that I wanted something different, something that would show the rain and the fall colors, but I didn’t know what.
Through the windshield
To take a slight diversion, here, when I went to Asheville a couple of weeks ago with my friends, one of them, Brett thanked me for letting him know about the book, The Power of Now. He said that he downloaded the audio book and listens to it quite frequently and that it’s made a remarkable change in his life. Mind you, there’s no magic in the book, but it certainly offers a different way of looking at life. It offers a way of looking at life that offers contentment and a way to find that peace that everyone seems to be looking for through external means. The main premise being that you already have what you need to be happy (content with what you have and who you are) at any moment in your life, you just need to know that no matter what you have done or will do in life, happens one moment at a time, now. There is only and will ever be only, the ‘now’. Past is a memory, not real anymore. Future is a thought, not real, but an idea. Focusing on the past or future means living in thought and missing what is happening right now. The big question is: What is missing right now? Also, if not ‘now’, when?
Leaves and wormwood
Anyway, I read the book about a year ago and just purchased the audio book. I started to listen to it. There were many things that I needed to hear, to remember. I went to lunch, went to the park with my camera, and began to shoot. There is something different that happens, I think, when I get those brief glimpses of ‘now’ and no-mind where the mind stops its incessant chattering. The top picture is the first picture that I took when I got out of the car. I’ve never done anything like it before. I like it. It’s a different type of expression.
Mostly everything that I read seems to center around the Tao, not intentionally, but it all seems to tie together.
Painting
No, I’m not a painter, nor do I play one on television! I’ve been experimenting with Photoshop a bit trying to increase my skills because, I might as well face it, it is part of the process, just as much as the darkroom.
Previously, when I wanted to increase or decrease light intensity in a certain area, I would use the burn and dodge tools. However, after reading a number of articles, it seems as though the preferred, or more accurate way, is to use white or black ‘paint’ with a very low opacity. This technique is mentioned in The Photoshop CS2 book for digital photographers, by Scott Kelby, which I am finding is one of the best books on CS2 that I’ve found. It has a lot of really useful material.
With this technique in mind, I set about experimenting a bit. I’m not good at it yet, but I certainly am liking the control that I have. I can vary the amount of ‘ink’ that I put down and get the desired effect. It’s much more versatile than using dodging and burning, though they have their place.
In these two images, I tried to be subtle with the technique. The first one is not painted in any way. I also botched up the sky (see the upper left near the tree where it looks poorly manipulated … because it was!). I could have corrected it, but thought that I’d just paint over it. Of course, I wouldn’t do it for a photo that I was going to print, I’d get it right, but for the sake of something to post, I just used paint!
The main area of interest was the tree line near the lake moving from left to right. There was a little bit of sunshine shining on the treetops, but I wanted it highlight that. If you look closely between the painted and non painted versions, you can see a difference. I also highlighted the lone tree on the right that stands right next to the lake, as well as the logs and border of the lake just to give a bit of ‘pop’. Note: I didn’t take time to paint the reflections, though if I were going to do it right, I would have taken the time, but I have to go to work today!
I would guess that as I get better with this technique, it will not be obvious, at least I hope not! Just more and more learning!
Got any techniques that you’d like to share?