Spin doctors

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Yesterday, I went back to a place that my friend Earl took me too: The Bullhole. The Bullhole is small dam that provides a minimal amount of electricity for something, but provides and infinite variety of pictures for me.

Because there are a number of well-worn river rocks, one must be careful to walk cautiously across them. Also, as the water flow is low in some areas, which seems to encourage the growth of some very slippery algae. Earl warned me of this, but I still slipped a couple of times yesterday.

As I was photographing the water, I was enjoying myself quite a bit. During those times when I was moving around, from place to place, my head was down, looking at where my next step would take me, concerned about those slipper rocks.

Although they were quite obvious, I had chosen to ignore all of the graffiti present around the area. It’s not so prevalent that one cannot photograph around it. Actually, it’s quite easy to get shots that don’t include it.

My thoughts instantly turned to the graffiti. I thought, why not make that the subject of today’s shoot? Many times when I go out shooting, I see lots of beauty and spend some time working around the downside of ‘our’ presence, such as trash and graffiti. But not today. I wondered how I could work it into the landscape.

Although I’ve never seen one in person, I thought of ancient pictographs, though I’m sure that earlier man had more important things to say than: Bud Light Lime. At least I hope so! Thankfully, these will have a much shorter life duration than pictographs thanks to them being exposed to the elements, in particular, running water. I’d hate to think that future civilizations might find this, study it, and think that our deepest thoughts were about beer with lime!

Anyway, it was an interesting exercise in that it reinforced what I already knew. We can be spin-doctors and show things the way we perceive them by or how we want them to be perceived by photographically carving out our perceptions.

Another interesting day with the camera.

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