Summer is Here!
I have come to accept that I can't do it all, but with school having let out, I have more time to do that which I had given up, and then some.
Tonight's photos are a newly published group from a mini-series I did called "Tears Along the Hudson". Let me start out by stating I AM NOT A PHOTOGRAPHER. It is my husband's medium, and he has taught me much about seeing, shooting, and expressing myself through that medium. I use it for documentation and as reference for my art, or to post my art on various social media sites. But once in a while, the magic happens. And I can shoot hundreds of photos before I get "the one". The five shown here were culled from 40 shots. I guess one out of 8 ain't bad...but good thing this is not film...at the cost of developing these days!
The story: I had just gotten my new Droid prior to a trip I was making to NYC to visit some friends. Before I took off I received a call from my daughter. She had gotten some bad test results, and was having a hard time processing it.
When your child has had cancer a few times, bad test results are like getting a hard right to the gut. Your heart feels like it is getting squeezed, and you have flashbacks of chemo, radiation, and watching your child crawl around on their hands and knees after their most recent round of poison. My friends told me I could cancel my trip, but I decided that I was going anyway, knowing that I had no control over anything, and that I had better enjoy my life while I have it.
It was a rainy trip, and though I enjoyed myself the best I could, it was clouded by a shroud of uncertainty, fear, and sadness. I shot these photos while on the Metro North train, which travels along the Hudson River. I used my Smart phone, a Droid X, using the sepia option of the camera, and did some fine tuning on the phone using Photoshop Xpress, and later on at home, a final tweak or two in Photoshop. The square format photo was done using Retro Camera, an Android App.
I think it is a fine series, and they hold their own in spite of my not being a photographer. Being an artist means you make art out of whatever medium is at hand; therein the challenge and creativity lives.
And as an aside, I often make the best art and write the best blogs, when I feel the deepest pain or the highest ecstasy. I wish I could make really great art somewhere in the middle, as being peaceful and centered is much preferable to being manic on either end of the spectrum. I guess learning how to do that is part of the journey.
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