Well, I don’t have any photos to post here, so today’s entry is a bit of rumination.

First, I am working on a new “Galleries” page. Some of you have noticed that my Gallery tab disappeared. For the last two years, it was hosted with an Apple MobileMe account, a service which I have since deemed to be a waste of money when you already have a hosting service and Google Sync. Additionally, it was more trouble than it was worth to update and couldn’t be organized exactly the way I wanted it to be. I plan to use SlideShow Pro for a pretty slick gallery page, but I need some time. I’ve already decided how I want it to look, so now I have to figure out how to make my dreams into reality. Along with that, I need to sort through my pictures all over again to find distinct categories. As some may know, I recently had a hard drive issue that resulted in the loss of some photos, but more importantly the loss of any semblance of organization I might have had at some point. I’m getting close, I can feel it .

From that data loss, I thought I had lost the panoramic pictures I had taken in Israel, some composed from as many as 17 pictures. Turns out, I’ve had them all along. I was looking for the original CR2 RAW files, when what I should have been looking for was the Photoshop PSD’s that I made from those RAW files. That techno-speak for WHEW!! Probably will share them here soon.

What else.. Well amidst all this, I have been super busy. Aside from my regular 8 to 3 and 3:30 to 8′s, I have started doing some freelance drafting and freelance photography. In 12 days, I also add Grad school to the list. I feel like I’m starting to go a little nuts, but it is probably more due to the fact that I can’t really do what I want to do: photojournalism. With such a tight schedule, it is difficult to try and slap something else on top without something else being tossed away. Right now, I can’t really put anything aside. I’m hoping that from my Grad school program at DePaul, it will open up some unique opportunities that I can feel better about casting aside some work to pursue what I want rather than being driven by circumstances. I really am fortunate and blessed to have the jobs I have and I don’t take any of them for granted. But at some point its time for something new. My first class is on writing/reporting for the media which should be interesting. Certainly will be great to develop another skill.

Some of you may remember my post from the middle of the summer, entitled “Hope“, where I talked about my mom having a brain tumor. Well, the so-called “Space Invader” has grown and my mom will go under the knife sometime in mid-May to get that baggert out. So yeah… Scary. Apparently the only surgeon in the country that can do the endo-nasal (doc-speak for through the nose) procedure is in Pittsburgh. Any thoughts and prayers are always welcome.

I feel like I’ve blabbed enough for one post. Just a lot going on right now and I’m trying to balance it all and trying to find a way to take care of myself as well. Its pretty tough.

Here’s to the future!
- KS

Today’s title comes from the song “Hills and Valleys” from The Rocket Summer’s latest album Of Men and Angels. I can’t get enough of this album.

We're coming off of hard and harder times.
Gonna be starting something,
That gets us, straight up out of here...

Say you're with me,
There's gold ahead, there's golden dreams
In life's hills and valleys,
Yeah will you hold on with me

Been a while since I have posted and I at minimum owe a portfolio from the summer.

I have had some trouble getting it posted, partially because I don’t feel an entire sense of closure from the experience. It taught me many a lesson, most specifically that I have a ton to learn (not that I didn’t know of this, but was made all the more apparent) and I love the work. I feel like in some ways I didn’t learn enough, that I felt more like an inexperienced worker than an eager learner.

And since the conclusion of said internship, I have immediately moved to working around 60 hours a week, started my last two classes of my undergraduate education (pray it be the end of my formal education) and experienced the loss of my father’s father, my grandpa Jack Sherman.

What can I say about the man? Not much here. His life means more than anything I could feebly write in this space. What I was humbled by and excited over was the significant quantity of my own pictures of him throughout the funeral home during the visitation and his service last Friday and that he held in his hands a picture I took of the whole family at his 85th birthday party earlier this year. A good man laid to rest easy; a trying week and a half for the family.

As such, I feel as though this semester didn’t simply start, but rather rolled into being. The waters are pretty muddy and I feel partially withdrawn but partially bored. I like most of my work, but none of it places a camera in my hands often, if ever.

What do you do to find inspiration? How do you jump from boredom to action? A project I have considered attempting was to carry with me an object and take a picture of it everyday, somehow. I think this might be an exercise in working a subject to death and interests me, but I have a hard to springing to action. Any suggestions on an object? It must be reasonably easy to bring with me everyday, or I just will stop (knowing myself).

Any words are appreciated. Gotta rock the car out of the mud!

Peace
- KS

I saw a scene today that will stick with me for a while… Very sad.

Earlier this morning I was driving with my brother to see my little sister’s ice skating competition (pictures to follow soonly). On Golf road as we turned to get some breakfast, I saw a goose standing in the middle of the street, hardly moving. I was unsure why it was just standing there in the middle of a highway, making no attempt to cross to the other side, odd.

Then I saw why.

In the left turn lane there was the reason for the goose’s hesitation: another goose, apparently ran over by a car. The body was just laying there in the left turn lane, feathers spread all over the place.

The second goose was standing there waiting for the other to move, to continue their journey across the road, maybe to swim in the near-by pond in front of the hospital. Of course, I will never know where they were off to, but there stood the goose ever still, waiting for some sign of life from the other, perhaps not understanding the scene in front of him (I of course am not able to truly identify the gender of either goose, therefore I default to the standard masculine forms).

We went through the drive through and as we pulled out to continue our journey, the scene was much the same. Another vehicle stopped and removed the dead goose from the middle of the road, but the other was still there. At this point however it seems as though that goose had come to terms with the fate of the other and had now squatted down in the same place he stood ten minuted prior, though now with his head tucked into his body, unable to move in the face of tragedy.

And I can’t help but make this more than a story about a goose that got hit by a car, for there was clearly emotion in the lack of motion of the living goose.

I can’t help but think of this same occurrence that happens thousands of times every day in different parts of the world as loved ones, friends or acquaintances are suddenly ripped off the face of the world without warning.

I can’t help but think of the scene in Genesis where Able is slain by his brother Cain; I imagine their horror, disbelief or their lack of understanding in the fact that a son and brother would no longer get up and finish the walk across the street.

I can’t help but think of that day when in the garden, Adam and Eve made the choice to take a step away from their Creator; to see the pain and torment of loss that was sure to be felt by Yahweh, as his children choose certain eventual death over an eternity of community.

I couldn’t help but think of that short verse in John 11:35, simply “Jesus wept.” His friend Lazarus had died, this could have been Jesus’ first experience with the death of a close friend; Jesus reacted much like any one of us would when faced with the sudden loss…

We know of course as the story goes that Jesus was able to raise his friend from the dead, I remember first asking that if he knew Lazarus was just going to be raised from the dead, why did Jesus bother crying about it? It seems likely that he was so knocked off his feet by his loss that he was unable to move, like the goose. There was nothing for him to do in that instant but stand there, waiting for his friend, unsure of what would happen next.

But as Jesus called for his friend, trusting that his Father had heard his prayers and his laments; sure enough, out came Lazarus.

Of course, we do not have that ability to simply call our lost ones back from the dead, rather this story gives us hope that life does go on; Jesus’ ministry continued, Adam and Eve had more children and God still cared and kept his promises to his people.

These two geese, one no more, taught me a great deal today. I am forever grateful that I can move on to tell the fallen one’s story.

Peace
- KS