Those of you who have known me a long time know that I was once very into photography as a hobby. Those of you who didn't know me back then have been seeing some of my favorite shots in the past week or so. At UConn, I would walk around most every weekend and take pictures of whatever happened to catch my eye. These were times when I could get out of my studying mode and into something completely different, although of course I didn't stop thinking while I was out there.
In fact, I think it made my school work better. I had a better understanding of what directors and cinematographers did because I too was at least an amateur image creator. And I could quickly dismiss the claims that some theorists made about the automatic nature of the camera. It was helpful, too, just to think about things in a different way. What on most days appeared to be just a tree under which I could hide from the sun for a bit became a whole object of study and fascination. Look at the way the bark cracks and reforms, watch over time as the leaves sprout, change color, and fall to the ground. In other words, photography gave me a different way of seeing the world, one that influenced every aspect of my life.
But then I got the advice to decide between photography and writing (aka academia) because while I was ok at both, I was expert at neither. When I decided, nearly 3 years after graduating from UConn to continue to pursue my academic prospects, I put my camera away except on special occasions like vacations. Soon enough the battery died and became unusable, a fun fact I found out when I arrived with it in Ireland, two years after starting my graduate schooling. I convinced myself that the cameras in phones these days were good enough to capture the beauty of Ireland (and everything else) so I figured I was done with my good old Canon T2i.
But I wasn't, or else I wouldn't be writing all of this. As the pandemic progressed, I found myself longing for a creative outlet that wasn't so closely related to what I do for a living. Wary about those around me, I looked for a reason to get out to the parks and wilderness of Columbus I had only dabbled in. As I look towards the future of increased isolation that comes with being done with coursework and beginning the dissertation process, I wished there was some way to get me thinking the way I was all the way back during my undergrad days. And, perhaps most importantly, I needed something to take up the down time at the end of the day, down time that becomes too easily filled with pithy phone games and mindless TV. So I asked my mom to see if she could scrounge up my old camera and lenses that I knew were lying around somewhere in my childhood bedroom.
She came through, and today I got a package with my camera, three lenses, and two new batteries (thanks Mom!). Filled with excitement, I eagerly put everything back together, the muscle memory clicking back into place with ease. After a quick resetting of the date and time (the camera thought that it was closer to 2010 than 2020), I snapped some pics, went back to reading a chapter of the book Chuck is standing on in this photo, then edited and uploaded the best of the pics to my new flickr (the old one has long exceeded the 1k photo limit in the free package):
https://flic.kr/ps/3TK2Bs. I'll be posting the pics I upload there to my instagram (beneclasedu) and Facebook as well, but probably the best version will be hosted on flickr. I'm not going to restart my Every Day a Photo blog because I don't have the time for all of that extra jazz. But I hope you enjoy seeing through my eye (and trusty camera) again. I know I'll enjoy taking and editing the pictures.
Chuck Remediation by
Alex Thompson, on Flickr