CONSUME CONSUME CAPITLISM

It’s been disgusting weather lately around here. Luckily we live somewhere with a generally temperate climate, so there are about two-to-four weeks of too-hot, gross-and-sticky weather in the summer and those are occurring now and I hate it. I hate heat so much but that’s a topic for another day. (Related: I really hate the idea that the planet is getting even warmer, it already sucks as it is.)

So on this morning’s bike ride, I packed all my crap and headed out to the local trails before things got too gross. Since I have decided to try to be a good little bl0gger, that included:

• a camera that’s not also a phone
• a gorilla-pod brand tripod
• a wireless shutter release

so that I could do my darnedest to try to crank out some pretty pictures while I’m already out there doing bike stuff.

Like many cyclists I know, getting out into the forest is a great way to work out some anxious energy to try to keep our mental health in check. This has led to a new beast rearing it’s head and I don’t really know how to feel about it yet: Take pretty pictures or you can’t blog about things you think suck.

Once I got out into the forest, I realized I forgot to take the light into account. It was already past 9 am so the sun was coming from a pretty high angle, and I was riding in some fairly dense forest, which means that everything was going to come out as a speckly mess.

Today was by no means any of my best work. But you know what, it didn’t come out half-bad. Another problem also came up that I hadn’t been thinking about – the underbrush is so thick in most places it would be extremely difficult to get any wide-angle shots. And not to get whiny because all of this stuff is live-and-learn, but the shutter-release I taped to my handlebars was in an awkward spot so that I couldn’t really brake or pull up on the bars without possible losing grip and splaying me and my stuff all over the ground.

So I decided that things were a bit of a loss. But I also decided to have a go and see how things turned out first. I decided to shoot some video and steal screen-grabs and see how that looked:

You know what? It’s fine. Make it black and white, move those little slider-knobs around in my editing software until it looks least-bad and out it goes! The whole thing really helps me to appreciate the effort that goes into making a legit video edit, especially if it’s self-shot.

So why bother?

I do enjoy photography. I like trying to see the world in different ways, finding out what would look interesting. How to make a 2-foot drop look like dropping off the carport when the world is doing it’s best to do the opposite. But I think I’m happy just knowing I’m out there creating. Like most of us, I consume the shit out of the internet. Read the news! Read the RSS feeds! Flip through Instant Gram! Do TikToks?! And quite frankly, it’s exhausting and never-ending.

When I put these pictures up here, at the very least, they’re mine.

So despite all of the whining and imperfect conditions and no real great images that showcase my riding ability and 6/10 physique, I’ll keep bringing my camera out there with me. Because I have something to show for it, whether or not that means anything. I won’t bring it out there every time since it interrupts my flow, trying to determine what might look good, keep track of where the light is coming from, all those fiddly details.

But sometimes, I will.