Opportunity and Cost: An Anniversary

I am still me.

It feels weird to say that. Or rather, it feels weird to have doubted that. But I guess that's what this past year has been: doubts about assumptions that used to come naturally.

Let's rewind: 1 year and 1 week ago, I strained my hamstring at pole vault practice. Again. And I decided it was time for a change. Two days later, I sat down at a friend's table with a box of tissues and wrote "Leaving Love Behind." A few days later, I sketched out some ideas in my composition book, went to the photo studio, and took a self-portrait that felt like it fit the gravity of that moment.

I wrote at the time that "I don't really know what the future will hold," but I figured that I would figure things out in time. There's no way I could have imagined the changes that were in store, for all of us, but I was dedicated to making the best of an unfamiliar situation, and I'm pretty happy with how the last year has gone.

The Three Laws of Infrastructure

"Let's get lunch."

Lock door. Hold hands. Walk, walk, walk.

Closed. Sigh. Hold hands. Walk, walk, walk.

Finally. Pay. Eat. Leave. Hold hands. Walk, walk

Look up.

Newton's third law. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Sometimes a thing catches your eye and spurs some unexpected thoughts. Like how the fundamental story of infrastructure is, really, movement. It's the duality of creating and resisting movement. Of creating a foundation that helps other things to move or to stay still.

But sometimes the story of infrastructure is also the duality of leaving one place to be in another. Of saying goodbye so you can say hello.

The Waiting Game (Moments In Between, part 3)

There are so many ways to wait. And even when you're going hard, sometimes you're also waiting — for an opportunity… for a break… for something to go wrong…

There are so many ways to wait. They're each a little different, and in 25 hours of racing, you're liable to experience more than a few. That's just how endurance races go. Plus, aside from the times when you're in the driver's seat, an endurance race is a lot like a relay race: when you've got the baton, you can make things happen. But when you don't, you still have to wait for it to come back around.

Five Day B&W Challenge: Day 2

There were a bunch of options here that all looked reasonable, but in the spirit of pushing outside of my comfort zone, I decided to focus on nuance and subtlety. One of the things I learned (which I already had some idea of) is that my main editing monitor has very poor grayscale rendition at very low luminance levels. The really low blacks tend to go away completely, and the levels that it does display tend to have color casts. By comparison, when I look at the same image on my second monitor, the color rendition is completely neutral.

Even so, I tried to use a light touch with the Tone Curve module to bring out a little bit of shadow detail on the near side of L's face. It's hard to tell if it worked or if it didn't — one one monitor, you can _barely_ see the slightest hint of her large, shiny earring. On my other monitor, I can see the faint hint of the outline of her ear and her haircut, and you can see that she's wearing a pair of earrings. That's about what I was going for, so I'm going to call that a tentative success.

I also used the Monochrome module in an attempt to massage her phone reflection into the other reflections in the bowl. It's still there, but it doesn't draw your attention the same way that it does in the original.

Finally, I tried a bunch of things to pull down the translucent highlight from the edge of her thumb on the bowl, but I didn't find anything that worked. The main challenge was that I _really_ like the stark contrast of her backlit hair, and the levels in the hair are pretty similar to the levels on her thumb. Clearly something I need to keep in mind while shooting.

Stages of Grief

"Why didn't you make him leave? I told you not to let him stay around here. Why didn't you tell him to leave?"

Watching someone go through the stages of grief gives a glimpse of their hopes and fears; it exposes the humanity that underlies their rational behavior. In this case, I heard the owner (I presume; second from right in the foreground) fluctuate between anger and acceptance.

"Well, at least no one was hurt. We'll be out of business one or two days, but we can afford that." He pointed at the employee he had been interrogating as he continued, "But if this guy got hit…" His voice trailed off. "What's important is that nobody got hurt."

According to other onlookers, the driver of this rental car got confused between the gas and the brake and plowed through the front of the store. And according to the owner, the driver had taken to spending hours upon hours loitering around the convenience store.

When I arrived, the occupants of the vehicle had gotten out, but the vehicle itself was still lodged in the storefront. The tow-truck driver then used his flatbed truck to help disentangle the vehicle from the remains of the store's glass-and-metal façade.

In the photo, a firefighter inspects the front of the car after it was loaded onto the truck.

The group of fire-fighters managed the general safety of the situation. They cautioned onlookers from getting too close, and I believe they shut off power to the building as the car was extricated — in case any electrical lines were damaged during the incident. Afterward, they hung caution tape at the entrances to keep vehicles from entering the somewhat glass-strewn parking lot.

After everyone else had left, the staff began the cleanup process. Within two days, they were back open for business, with a plywood wall in place of the damaged sections of glass. Life goes on…

Naptime

Our household, in a single vignette