Unlike you, part of me misses when I blogged almost every day. If for no other reason, I can’t remember what I did or rather didn’t do after a few days. Especially when the gloomy days have been nearly all the same for the past week. Such is life in the dank pre-winter of mid-Michigan.
There has been lifting heavy things for no reason and climbing stairs to nowhere at the gym, and on Tuesday, for the first time in 230 days, I got on board the Campeon and did a quick, 35 minutes of Zwift™—ing. Despite pedaling nowhere for 35 minutes through a virtual landscape, it felt good to get back on a bike.
Finally got some new hikers.
I also continued to spend time walking in the woods with my camera. This has become part of my regular routine a few days a week. While walking this past Sunday, it occurred to me that I really don’t know how to describe myself as a photographer. I tried on Instagram recently by changing my profile to say that I’m a “Snapshotter of nature, footy, foods, bullies, rural Michiganganderburgh, and other curiosities.” All that is true, but I am more focused on the nature part of my photography. What is it? Most of the time, it’s not landscape photography per se, nor is it wildlife. I’d never pass up a shot of a critter, but I don’t go out with the sole purpose of shooting wildlife.
I’m just gonna hang here for a bit.
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I don’t know if the Photo Gods have come up with a term for someone who walks through the woods and finds great visual pleasure in the odd details and randomness that nature provides. All I know is that it takes me entirely too long to walk a few miles, and I wouldn’t wish hiking with me on anyone. “OH LOOK, A LEAF!” “Yeah, they’re everywhere, it’s a fucking forest! Moron!”
I can’t feel my feet!
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A sad sign that hunting season in full swing; a long trail of blood through the woods. Hopefully the deer was found and didn’t die for nothing.
What type of photographer I am, or how you describe the subjects I photograph matters not. Just like during the cock and balls of my racing and riding, what sort of riding I did mattered little. I would ride singletrack, road, gravel, whatever. And here I am doing the same with photography picture taking.
Tree down!
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“At first I was afraid, I was petrified…”
Oh well, it’s all about having fun, getting outside, and scratching the lifelong creative itch I was cursed with. Both the process of taking the photo and the end result bring me peace, and my mind becomes stimulated in a way that’s hard to describe; taking in everything, absorbing details, listening to the sounds of the forest. I don’t care what you call it, I think that’s enough.
All that remains of a post-hike Taste of Greece Pasta Bowl: a sad chickpea wrapped in a shred of spinach.
Later.