You are mother fuckers, one and all.

I don’t care that you love your daughter and would never hurt her, that you own six cats and would never hurt them, that hey, I have this cat here you can have to replace yours, that I’m going through hard times right now, that I’m really sorry, I didn’t notice hitting anything and why are you shouting at me. It doesn’t give you fucking leeway to do 50 through a 15 mph area and run down my cat.

We loved Scooter. He was one of the most absolutely friendly and playful cats I’ve ever had a joy to know in my life - it was nearly a daily thing that we would see him at a neighbour’s house and playing with their children.

Mariah rescued both him and another of his litter from death’s door and bottle fed them back to health. Caira loved him. He was her play pal, you know. He never bit her or clawed her - a true rarity for our eclectic selection of cats - and she loved nothing more than to just hug him.

Everyone else here loved Scooter too. You’d never get him to admit it, but even Mariah’s dad loved the cat, and he’s a curmudgeon in the finest sense of the tradition.

So thank you. You ran down my daughter’s cat in front of her. Watching Scooter bleed out and die on the pavement, and knowing I couldn’t help him, was one of the absolute worst moments of my life.

Thank you, you son of a bitch.

Scooter

“What book is that?”
“Cyptonomicon.”
“Oh, what’s it about?”
“Cryptograpgy..”
“Oh, what’s that?”
“It’s encryption, scrambling.”
“Ah, I see. What’s that?”
“It’s a form of math.”
“What kind?”
“Cryptography.”
“What’s that?”

I don’t know which of us was worse in that conversation. I’m on my (I think) third run through Cryptonomicon. Like all of Neal Stephenson’s works it’s a lengthy and excellent read, but it’s not for the faint of head.

In a shocking change of subject, photography is doing much better. I’m second shooting at a wedding in Utah over the weekend, I had a promising interview yesterday, and I had fun shooting some very beautiful dogs over in east Las Vegas:

Kinbu

In amongst my wanderings and doing of the past week, I had another run-in with the world’s most awesome alley cat:

Tough Cat +1

Incoming terror

She just wants love…

I really love this cat. She’s beautiful, friendly, and very playful to boot.

/lame_blurb

I was in connemara with Mike on Tuesday morning, although honestly most of my photos outside of the IR I took at Lough Corrib were muck. We met Katie in Spiddeal on the way back for lunch and I got sun burnt.

/lame_blurb_2

The vanishingly rare Pink Tree

One alone

I accidently deleted several hundred photos tonight - Fremont Street and Mariah’s belly from just before I left last June, and I feel physically sick over it. They’re on my NAS, I realised the deletion immediately and unmounted it, so I know I can recover them. It doesn’t leave me feeling any less sick over temporarily wiping out some very precious pictures.

For the rest of the day, I tried to show up some weekend warriors who were nervously snapping away at sawns from the ramp at South Park by getting down and bravely crawling up to said feathered beastie. I got about a hundred absolutely magnificent photos of them, but the whole experience wound up with me sticking my forehead in fresh bird shit and getting snickered at. I was deservedly owned.

Swan

The whole experience got me thinking: For all that they are beautiful animals, swans are a swans are a hugely popular subject for fledging photographer. I know that I’ve taken my own fair share of pictures of them. So what makes an awesome or a different photo? I commented last night on a forum thread that short of offworld travel being opened up to the unwashed masses, most subjects have already been photographed in most ways imagineable. So what makes one in paticular different?

You do. You put your own mark of strangeness on a photo. I’ve looked at photos by acclaimed phofessionals, which the masses have lauded, and found a bland vista. I’ve looked at blurry photos taken by children and found a world of wonderment. It’s different for you. You can see the magnificent and subtely perfect sunset in the first and a crappy photo of some toys in the second. I won’t even pretend I have some form of enlightened stance on what makes something great as I firmly believe that the subconcious makes the decision in a split second. It’s then left up to the concious mind to justify this like or dislike. Oh for sure there’s certain aesthetics in a photo I’m inclined toward, but it’s all in the gut.

And all of the above really sounds like I’m arrogant and talking shit. Win! I’ll leave words to Jenny in future as she has a gift for the English language that I honestly lack.

Jenn, Mum and I went out to dinner tonight, where we got in a fight because I brought my dammed camera along. Jenn asserted that she hadn’t given me permission to take her photo actually stirred pride in me of all things; she’s learning. After an okay-ish curry I photographed the family behind our table as they got their birthday cake, on a complete whim:

This makes photography worthwhile

They were incredibly happy with the photos and I wound up showing the two boys how to use my camera, and gave us all some cake (glee!); and my own family were happy I did all of that for people who were complete strangers. The whole incident cememted my own outlook on charging for photos (I didn’t, before anyone yells at me): If I take a photo on my own time, it’s yours if you’re not a company trying to make money on it. If you pay me to take photos for you, that’s an entirely different matter.