lensblog

For all my intentions of aspiring to be one of the digerati or at the very least an active netizen, I don’t seem to be doing all that well with regards to standing up on my little lensbox soapbox and ramming my opinions down people’s collective throats the way some seem intent on doing.

I don’t have anything news-worthy or shocking to write about. I don’t subscribe to extremist views or expound on the virtues of fellow netizens I hope to garner some small measure of favour with. Perhaps it is a character flaw. I am a pacifist at the end of the day, tending more towards neutrality than any measurable polarities.

As I have often said in the past and maintain now and into the future, I am simply ME. No pretences. No hiding behind online personas. Take me as I am or leave me be. I make mistakes like everyone else, including you, even if you don’t want to admit it.

It’s as simple or as complicated as that, depending on your point of view and I am at peace with your choice, no matter what it may end up being.

Moving on…

As is common in the history of my online existence, I have been through one of my many quiet phases; lost in concentration, usually over one thing or another. Sometimes it is work (or at the very least, due to the nature of my vocation, the mental fatigue that follows a day in the office). Sometimes it’s a game – both the XBOX 360 and World of Warcraft draw me away from this plane of existence on a semi-regular basis. Sometimes I just have nothing to add while I traverse the ‘inner universe’ we’ve created online – I would far rather absorb information in silent contemplation than spew forth misinformation while jumping up and down and drawing attention to myself.

Silence, more often than not, is golden. Barring that, duct tape is silver, a handy adhesive I often wish I could liberally apply to the hands and mouths, digital or physical, of those I encounter online.

I refer, of course, the the oft-spotted, much-reviled online troll. Frequently found in it’s preferred feeding/hunting grounds, the bulletin boards, forums and comment sections of just about every public site that allows user feedback and interaction.

I had a fair amount of spare time while working late shifts the last few months and I spent some time lurking in one of the local bulletin boards, MyBroadband.

If I had to paint a picture of “MyBB”, I think I could quite easily get away with Mos Eisley, the spaceport town on the planet Tatooine in the fictional Star Wars universe.

Obi-Wan, in his wisdom, described it as follows: “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”.

In the interest of fairness, I suppose not all of MyBB fits that description. Just most of it. The worst part, though, has to be the dreaded PD section, “Philosophical debates”.

Do not enter here without either a strong constitution, thick skin or having your wits about you.

Here, you will face derision and mockery at every turn. Your faith, no matter what it is, will be questioned and torn apart, to be scrutinized by those with little regard for hurt feelings or one’s beliefs and passions. You can try and argue. You can supply evidence. You can write impassioned words and essays that would make holy men proud. But you will not succeed… the hunting pack will gather and surround you and eventually descend upon you in an ugly barrage of posts and retorts that speaks volumes about the cynicism in Man’s soul that has found fertile ground in which to grow and spread in the online metaverse.

Now and again you might find a glimmer of light, a lone wolf that seems to be fending off the pack, only to find that in order to survive the onslaught, this individual has almost become like them in his uncaring brutality and zeal. The wan light flickers and fades…

Coming up for air from that dark place, you might think to wonder into the Gaming sections, only to find similar situations, often written and perpetuated by the same individuals. Glancing over at the Technical forums, you are assaulted by the whining of those more intent on spreading their own miserable opinions that helping work towards a solution. New threads start only to be found by these sad souls who soon drown any hope of extracting useful information from the thread with their complaints, opinions and rants.

And yet I cannot seem to stay away…

Like watching a train wreck in slow motion, I find myself fascinated while simultaneously despairing for what could have been an amazing community of shared knowledge supplied  by some obviously great minds.

Will we ever have an online Utopia?

If the online metaverse is a mirror of our physical reality, I somehow doubt it.

I leave you, for now, with the following (apt) image…

To those of us masquerading as something more than we really are out there in the wired world… consider the above image and ask yourself “Who am I really trying to fool?”

Be truthful. Be yourself.

Who knows, you might be surprised at the response…

I’d forgotten what it was like to walk around all day with a camera, looking for something to shoot… It’s taking some getting used to again, but I’m quickly finding that my eye latches onto things a lot quicker than it has the last while. Now I just need to get my camera reflexes up to speed to match it.

Admittedly, Johannesburg as a city doesn’t always provide the safest space for creative wanderings… especially dangling a camera around one’s neck like a tourist. But I’m learning to seize opportunities where and when I can.

For now, I’ll be posting mostly skylines and some candids but I’m going to try and take some more street-life shots soon. And hopefully, once the studio is ready, I’ll be able to do some portrait work, product shots and maybe even something larger than that… My partner in crime tells me we should be able to do car shoots indoors once we’re done.

Sadly, this all has to take place in the few hours I have to myself away from my day job as a IT security engineer. And with the 2010 World Cup just around the corner, it’s likely I’ll be working shifts at our local telecoms’ network operations centre for the duration of the event.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Last few years have been a bit hectic for me, career-wise… it hasn’t left much time for much else other than work, sleep and whatever I can fit in in-between.

At least I have a new camera now. It’s not the greatest, but it’s digital and it has decent capabilities… Canon Powershot SX10IS for those that are wondering. I’ve donated my old Canon EOS500N to a friend of mine’s mother that wants to get into photography. A little service and some TLC and it should prove a good starting platform considering it has 28-80mm and 55-200mm lenses.

Nothing really new and exciting to share just yet. Work is keeping me busy and I haven’t had much time for personal creative experiments other than some standard sunsets and lunar exposures…

But, I’ll have access to a studio soon. Lighting kits, backdrops, infinity curve, Canon 50D, the works… So watch this space.

Cheers for now.

And yet again, time passes by and I find myself having to fend off gargantuan spiders and dust-bunnies in order to find what was once my blog… Sadly, it seems to be the norm these days. Myself and some of my good friends and peers all seem to be suffering from an acute lack of personal free-time…

Oh, don’t get me wrong… Many are the nights where I’ve lain in bed, thinking to myself, I should write something… anything. Maybe post some photos. Write some prose. But all too often, on those insomnia-plagued nights, the intention is lost during the delirium that I am forced to experience until such time as I am too physically exhausted to fight anymore and I manage to snatch a few hours of precious sleep before being forced to wake up once more. Some nights I manage several hours. Others, an hour or two before thirst and Nature’s call begin to torment me in an infuriating cycle of broken sleep and waking to simultaneously solve and create the reason for my sleeplessness.

So I read. Either a book or an e-book or I browse the web, the underside of my laptop burning the hair and skin on my chest… an oddly comfortable pain. I read my mail. Browse through a seemingly endless stream of RSS feed articles in Google Reader. Catch up on my web comics. Browse art and photography sites, looking for inspiration, finding much but doing very little with it all except saving it to my hard drive… in case… maybe later… Procrastination is a terrible thing…

I look around Facebook and amuse myself by reading the comments people have left for the world to see. I gloss over the mountain of application spam, searching for those special people whose daily activities I feel I should follow. I silently smile and laugh with them, or commiserate as need be, without leaving my mark. They know… Or at least they should by now.

And I find comfort in my music. In the sound of the fan blowing full force over me. In the heat of the electric blanket under me, warming the tired, aching muscles in my back and shoulders, undoing little by little the bad posture I subject myself to every day and the stress of working in an industry that has perhaps one of the highest stress-related casualty statistics outside of law-enforcement and medicine.

I’m rambling… It’s been a while.

Perhaps this is a new form of auto-writing. The true thoughts of an exhausted psyche… Certainly I am not writing this with any plan or direction…

On night’s like these, I miss my dogs. I miss their presence in the house, the click-click of their nails on the tiles as they move about the house to get water or go outside and attend to Nature’s call. I miss their cold noses in the back of my neck, forcing me to make space on the bed for them to lie down, then proceeding to turn three of four times on the spot and then unceremoniously dropping their weight onto the mattress, sighing a gentle ‘whuff’ as they settle down again.

Lately I find myself kneeling on the floor, resting my torso on the bed. It’s an oddly comfortable position to sleep in except for the fact that my knees end up killing me after an hour or two. Then I climb back onto my bed, beat the pillows into submission again and try again. Or get water, walk around the dark house, feeling the cold tiles under my feet and leaning my fevered forehead against cool walls.

What demon torments me so, some have asked? I do not know. All that I know is that since the passing of my Mother in March 2000, I have not had a proper night’s rest that I can recall, other than through medical assistance or after being submersed in sea-water for the greater part of a day.

I find myself wishing I could escape the confines of my flesh and wander the night, free of physical constrictions such as mass and substance. I would explore the night air, listening to the lives of people around me, people that I am guilty of distancing myself from.

I would soar above the city and try to take in the dark essence of it’s concrete heart, whilst marvelling at the constant activity evident across it’s many paths and byways at even this late hour, to be captured like my beloved time-lapse photos on the ephemeral canvas of my mind’s eye.

Or I would tag along with a creature of the Night, looking to see the world through it’s eyes as it moved from street to street, yard to yard, tree to tree. I would try to understand these peculiar bipedal creatures that don’t seem to follow Nature’s advice and settle down once the sun goes down and leave the Night to her Children.

Or I would watch people’s dreams, having none of my own to experience (at least not consciously – since about the age of 12…) and marvel at the extremes of the human imagination. Such wonderful and terrible things I have heard of in dreams. And yet the closest I seem to come is watching the stream of moving images in my head as I read.

…

Is it possible for an electronic device to mock you? If so, my bedside clock may as well be dressed up as a court jester. Perhaps I should get it a jester’s hat… It might seem more appropriate then.

…

I feel the beginnings of the Sandman’s passage through the room… a heaviness that settles on my eyelids. I hope that it lasts long enough for me so that when next I open them, it will be to the sun-lit landscape outside my windows and not the all-too-familiar view of my dark room with it’s damned Jester alarm clock ticking away the minutes until the alarm sounds, skipping forward through the night on the blinks of my eyes.