I had this idea of drawing a heart with a laser pointer. I set the camera up on a tripod, set the timer to ten seconds, and then drew this with the laser in the 3.2 seconds the picture was exposed.
Actually, it wasn’t easy like that. It took me 50 tries to get right. Have you ever tried to draw a heart on the wall with a laser pointer? I did two of them, and getting them to look anything like hearts, timed to 3.2 seconds, is quite a feat itself. This was the best I could do. I like the hearts—they look jagged, which is good because hearts aren’t perfect, nor is love. Perfection just doesn’t exist, and life would be boring if it did. The only perfect state is continuous personal growth; you can’t become perfect and then stagnate, wallowing in your perfection.
I drew the hearts on a window because the reflections on the glass turn up much brighter in the camera. In Photoshop, I brightened the laser trails and heart outline to make it more distinctive, while adding contrast and darkness to the surroundings. This was at ISO1600, so the end result is grainy and riddled with artifacts, but spirited nonetheless.
When your hearts meet, let them have fire!
Canon Rebel XTi, Sigma EF 105mm 1:2.8, 3.2″, F2.8, 105mm, ISO1600, 2008-09-06T02:26:48-04, 20080906-062648rxt
Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp and link here.
I remember in 1st grade, doing calculations on how much time I’d spend, say, brushing my teeth each day. If I use five minutes per day on that, that’s 1825 minutes per year, or 30 hours, or a whole school week! My, how much time that was wasting! That’s 2% of my life!
Of course, keeping your teeth clean is very important, a task well worth 2% of your time. But it is when we apply this sort of bean-counting to everything we do, that we run into problems.
When you try to break your day down into minutes and then assign chunks of them to certain projects, like “shoot creative photos for thirty minutes,” it works well on paper, but then in practice it falls flat. You might not even notice it at first. You’ll be busy following the list you made to the letter, taking photos that are decidedly uncreative, thinking you’re making some big accomplishment. Then when you’re waxing the car (or whatever the hip thing is to do nowadays), and you see some great scene like Leafy Sunset 6, you’ll ignore it because it’s not on your list. You’ll miss out on all sorts of opportunities.
You can’t schedule creativity or inspiration. In fact, I’d go so far as to say you can’t schedule your life. Sure, you can make a “schedule” and follow it, but it’s not going to be any better than what you’d do applying yourself without confinement, nor will it wring an ounce of efficiency out of you.
Apportionment’s real value is in building discipline. Once you’ve become disciplined, meaning that you’ve found goals worth focusing on and you’re working toward them, scheduling is just a waste of 2% of your life itself, because you’re so in tune with your work that rigidity shackles your …
... continue reading
