Rambling: Journaling and Photography and My Almost-First Selfie and Stuff

The Journaling:

So, I keep thinking about "journaling". Now, this blog is thoroughly journal-like; what else could you call a forum where I babble about dieting, the shoes I wear, and my issues with my mother? (When I first typed that, I mistyped it as "issue." Suggesting that there was only one issue. Funny, huh? OK, moving on...)

But the blog doesn't quite entirely fill the journal gap, because (1) there's a limit to just how foolish I'm willing to sound in public and (2) I someday want to publish a book or books, and if I write every thought that I think, and publish every word that I write, why would anyone ever publish any of that between covers?

What's Your Point?:

I mention this because I'm taking up photography, as the latest addition to my already overstuffed mental storeroom of hobbies. I've occasionally wished that I had written more during the starting-up process of other hobbies and interests, because I quickly forget what I was thinking during the times when I didn't know what I knew later. (Yes, there's an incoherent breathlessness about that sentence. I'm going to leave it right there anyway.) When I go back to re-read what my blog has to say about, for example, my recent forays into kinda-fashion, there's a lot of "Oh, yeah..." about my own past thoughts, and I know that the blog posts represent just a tiny fraction of the thoughts and experiences.

I don't really think that I'll be all that interested in my thoughts and experiences as I start with this photography thing, and I think that it would be even less interesting in a book. But I've thought that about other things. So I'm going to write about photography, here, and also probably in a journal somewhere. I'm not sure what "somewhere" is. I prefer to do all my writing in bbEdit, of all things, but I'm a lousy organizer of files. So maybe Scrivener, because it has built-in organization.

Yes, Scrivener. I just ran off and created a "Fiction, with sub-heads" project and called it Journal. So there.

But, anyway, moving on to photography.

So You're Using Those Section Titles Again, Huh?:

Yep.

Why?:

No idea.

Photography?:

So. I have no eye for visual arts. None. Not a scrap. I never have. At least, I've always assumed that I never have, though now and then I have a faint hope that I'll find that I was wrong. So I'm not interested in photography for the purpose of creating Beautiful Things. But I am under the belief that I have something of an eye for character and the absurd and the weird. Maybe. Possibly. Perhaps. It could happen. So that's the focus.

But right now, the focus is, well, things like focus. And light. And aperture versus shutter priority and all those things that I only barely understand. I'm using a point-and-shoot camera, the Sony RX100 III, but point-and-shoot or not, it has features that I don't understand yet. Well, and sometimes I'm just using my phone, as in the image above. I'm not sure why I'm finally offering an image where you can kinda sorta almost see my face, or at least you could if it weren't for the hat and the phone. You might be able to pick my nose out of a lineup, anyway.

Um. Where was I? Yes, why the selfie? I think it's partly because if I'm going to occasionally blog photographs, they will probably contain people, and if I'm going to post photos of people who aren't me, it seems wrong to be too cowardly to post photos of me. See? And it's partly about the ongoing fashion and learning-not-to-hate-my-appearance process.

That Almost Rates A Digression Heading, Doesn't It?:

No. Shush.

Photography, Still:

So I've been reading about photography, but I want more of what I call munchy books. I discuss munchy books here. I want a book that talks about photography in a story-telling, philosophizing, anecdote-studded kind of way. I want the photography book equivalent of Henry Mitchell's On Gardening and The Essential Earthman.

But while I'm searching for that, I'm downloading Kindle previews for various photography books (which I will probably order through my Local Book Store when I narrow them down) and looking for photography blogs and forums and stuff. And I keep looking at Vivian Maier's photographs. Looking through them, it occurs to me that I've put Vivian Maier (photographer) and Rumer Godden (author) in the same category in my mental filing cabinet. I'm not sure what the label on that folder is, but they're sorted together.

I just converted the selfie of me from a regular color picture to the "Tonal" filter in iPhoto, because...I think out of sheer pretentiousness, because doesn't black and white photography seem more...more of all those things you want to be when you're being pretentious? I see that the resolution was also drastically reduced. I don't know what caused that and if I have any control over it.

I have things to learn.

I'm noticing that the above few paragraphs are an extra rambling dull catalog of thoughts, and that I'm tempted to cut most of them out. That's another reason for journaling--I want to record some thoughts that I don't edit, not even a little bit, for their readability or entertainment value.

Um.

Time For Another Subject Heading?:

No. Shush.

Hmph.:

OK, I think that is all.

Image: Mine.