Best Guess Photography

I lost your sight in the deep dark light.

2010-08-01T22:47:00.019-05:00

Take this reaction and throw it outside. Remember to erase it's name and bury the limbs in the sand.

Do everything you can to forget your heart.

There is neither need nor want in the shallow palms of two hands disconnected by speech that never formed.
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Song of the second: Gimme Little Sign by Brenton Wood
Book of the moment: Outliers by Malcom Gladwell
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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: Spring 2010
Notes:

Three shadows passed above me as I stood below the bridge. The dust that sparkled with radiance of street light and lost cause filled my nose. It seemed that tonight she had been taken by surprise, nothing more than a paper bag filled with static eyes. I had become used to the feeling of no control, knowing that she would never take a turn toward my avenue...never would she think my name and want to see me in the same flash of memory. After this reaction of honesty, I walked down a sidewalk that had been cast so many years ago it would take five hands to count them out. Floating above this concrete nostalgia all I could imagine was endless time bundled with a thousand smiles that never gave up the hope of that single second of silent sound.

...thoughts rang loud in a head filled with water stung ears...

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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: Spring 2010
Notes:

Before the explosion, the bricks sat in the same space for thirty years. There was never a thought of flying from the circle of permanence, this spot that was held together stronger than an arm wrestler. Pebbles would never speak badly of the horizontal stone they sat between and surely they would not think about interrupting the pattern.

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"An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way."
~Charles Bukowski
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shake the sun awake.

2010-07-10T00:13:00.016-05:00

White pastels laid in the background as lines blurred together to form the smoothest transitions. I had seen moments through a lens that when my eye pushed back and looked into reality things seemed just slightly different, slightly altered. Everything was still there in the same point of light it had been roughly three seconds earlier. Nothing had changed or disappeared; yet, I knew it wasn’t the same. There seems to be a collapse as your elbows bend towards your ribs and you try and hold the box as steady as possible, with any movement resulting in a haze of rhythm.

All there is are vibrations. Grab them with open palms and find them in everything you do, see, hear, feel, and breathe. This won’t last long and you will realize it far to late.

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Song of the second: Firecracker by Steel Train
Book of the moment: Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: Summer 2010
Notes:

I leaned out my window yesterday, my elbow propping me as my weight collapsed onto the ledge. The air, moving over my hands and climbing towards my shoulder, seemed to shift in zigzags as if to say the storm would be here soon. The siren outside told me there were only minutes until it would be night at two in the afternoon. The thunder spread through the sky like a flower peeling open for the first time. Before I realized it was raining the beads were already racing down my forehead waiting to jump of the cliff of my chin.

The initial warning came about ten minutes after I woke up to another commercial on the television. It was the type of warning that shutdown every channel so no matter how vigorously you pressed the next button the only thing to change was the number in the top right corner. There was a moment where I saw tree's press their branches close together and tighten all the leaves that lay attached as if they were eyelashes guarding against wild sand. A smile came over my face and for the first time I felt excited.

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Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Date: Summer 2010
Notes:

Where did the list go that you made when you were twelve? It had all the things you wanted to accomplish. All the things you wanted to do. My list is buried in a backyard I can no longer find. I can’t say with much certainty that anything on the list was ever accomplished, though, I think that was the point of the whole thing. If you think there is only one paved road to go down then grip the steering wheel and turn your knuckles white as you cannonball through the guardrail. There is no path, only the many different directions you decide to go.

Break through, break free, break out…and just go.

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"The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter.. perfect in its bud as in its bloom.. with no reason to explain its presence.. no mission to fulfill.. a joy to the artist, a delusion to the philanthropist.. a puzzle to the botanist.. an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man."
~James McNeill Whistler
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Fiocco di Neve

2009-01-11T15:17:00.014-06:00

In an unrehearsed burst, the clouds lose their grip and a snowflake is born. Shimmering like diamonds in the wrinkles of your palm, this tiny heartbeart of lightning bolts will live for only minutes.

Quickly, as I squinted, skyscrapers melted into my hand as jagged cliffs were reduced to tree limbs. Light bent backwards, rushing to find ruby sapphire cracks between each layer. As I blinked the snowflake was gone, I shook my hand and watched it explode; becoming tiny pebbles halfway smoothed from a millennia in some Colorado river.

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Song of the second: No Lonesome Tune* by Townes Van Sandt
Book of the moment:When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris
*for the record, I couldn't find any video clips of the aforementioned song. Enjoy this clip of, waitin' around to die.
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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: Summer 2008
Notes:

Verbs with lips
Tell you lies
Forming words
That breathe life

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"The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it."
~ Gustave Courbet
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Words without wings.

2008-12-06T16:35:00.014-06:00

The flowers, like voices, shift with your mood. Each bursting bloom raises questions of when the color will run out. When the path is covered by branches, leaves, twigs, dust, vines, spiders and everything else that ever fell, the light my eyes leave will lead the way.

Find yourself, before anyone else has a chance to.
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Song of the second: Weekend by The Sea & Cake
Book of the moment: End of Food by Paul Roberts
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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: Summer 2008
Notes: Two sets of arms raised in the air, neither knowing which expiring second would catapult the knuckles forward like an army protecting its king. Sweat poured, as quick as a rivers current, from the ghost white fists that found an inescapable jaw. The punch threw rivets of spit and blood into the air as quickly as it was thrown. In hindsight, the fighter now wishes he would have moved a single second earlier in any other direction.

The worst part of the whole evening was the car ride home, seconds slipped into minutes slipped into hours slipped into eternity. Flashes that were both bright and blinding tried sneaking past the tinted glass of his car door. The sunken fighter could only sit there, chest moving outward then inward, eyes twitching then blinking, heart pumping and then beating. There was nothing that could make him feel anything but defeated; which, in actuality, he had just become. He wasn't broken, he was just bruised, and another day he thought would eventually come and with it, another chance.

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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: Summer 2008
Notes: It seems surprising when you can look into the bottomless sky and see beauty where no one else does. When you see it, like a child spelling words in his alphabet soup, there is that moment of clarity and exactness. Others try, but you can tell it simply does not hit them like it does you, straight in the face with no jokes.

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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: Summer 2008
Notes: Take the guitar strings of your life and bend them until they scream and howl.

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"What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is in harmony parallel with nature."
~ Paul Cezenne
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Broken Rubber Bands

2008-05-28T20:09:00.021-05:00

This seems like the perfect spot for absolute silence.
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Song of the second: Galaxies by Laura Veirs
Book of the moment: Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser
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Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Date: May 2008
Notes: Jacob buried his eyelids and fell into his dreams. He listened and softly words knocked at his ears...

"This way to the light that is shining beyond those walls. If you run straight, legs like bicycles, you'll never be caught. Leave smoke filled paths that hide your shine like candles melting into wood."

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Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Date: May 2008
Notes: The sky, is there anything greater?

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Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Date: May 2008
Notes: As she raised the receiver to her ear, she could hear my lips parting and sensed my words slipping out . Then, for no explainable reason, the signal cut and my words fell to the ground, buried upon a dusty dream. She stood still, a vicious wind circling her water colored eyes. The receiver clicked, a sound so familiar, leaving her frozen until the next ring.

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Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Date: May 2008
Notes: "But with the throttle screwed on, there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right... and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are the wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it... howling through a turn to the right, then to the left, and down the long hill to Pacifica..."

- taken from Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson

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"After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." - Aldous Huxley
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I pounded, for what seemed like hours, on a door that wasn't locked.

2008-05-02T10:04:00.039-05:00

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At times, for some of us, we just need release. The feeling of being let go, without warning, at the most unexpected second. Finding a breath at the bottom of your stomach that you can pull up like a sunken anchor. Your eyes open and you just walk.

I will sit here, listlessly, as the sun shuffles across the sky, slowly falling to aide the moons rise.

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Song of the second: Geography by Thao Nguyen
Book of the moment: You Will Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers
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Location: Portland, Oregon
Date: April 2008
Notes: A fence with sharp teeth should not be provoked. You never know when it might reach out and bite you.

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Location: Portland, Oregon
Date: April 2008
Notes: While inside, all we saw was the brick. We were not allowed to look past the blades of grass that led to exploding wildflowers. Our lives seemed black and white, left to live in shadows of moonless nights. It serves perfect reason as to why these now covered windows are only fragments of days I no longer remember.

As the sheet drifts over my face, pictures of ocean edged cliffs rush past my eyelids. I will soon be there, on the beach, toes tapping the glass blue water.

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Location: Portland, Oregon
Date: April 2008
Notes: If not for this arrow, I would have never found relief.

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Location: Portland, Oregon
Date: April 2008
Notes: What two things do Portland residents love?
1) umbrellas
2) volkswagons

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The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
~ William Shakespeare from, "The Merchant of Venice"
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Stand here, beyond the light.

2008-04-28T20:50:00.015-05:00

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This palette of silhouettes we have is nearly impossible to lift. Sometimes, during certain songs and infrequent frames, I begin to see why. While the shape of each color drowns in water, I walk forward, eyes fastened like bridge bolts to the sky.
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Song of the second: Red and Purple by Dodos
Book of the moment: You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers
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Location: Chicago, Illinois

Date: April 2008

Notes: Wrigley Field never seemed so bright.

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Location: Chicago, Illinois

Date: April 2008

Notes: At certain times, the letters start to feel like words.

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Location: Chicago, Illinois

Date: April 2008

Notes: If I can not hear you speak. If I can not feel your words. Then surely I will never know what your voice sounds like.

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And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs
And as silently steal away.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from, The Day Is Done
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It is much easier to go the opposite direction.

2008-04-14T20:31:00.013-05:00

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Without sight we need ears.
Without ears we need sight.
Without speech we need faith.
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Song of the second: In the Dark by Josh Ritter
Book of the moment: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
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Location: Chicago, Illinois

Date: New Years Eve 2006

Notes: My camera is asking you politely, "just stop acting like you're not looking, we can all see through you."

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Location: Chicago, Illinois

Date: April 2008

Notes: Inside, he wondered, did everything still look the same? After so many years you just expect things will shift, even if you wish them not to. This was it, the dust dropped and he could see. He was quiet with wide eyes. He said absolutely nothing and was fine living within this moment of time.

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Location: Chicago, Illinois

Date: April 2008

Notes: I hope this says, "you rock", but I doubt it does.

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" It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony." - Benjamin Britten
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Yesterday I saw today.

2008-04-12T13:48:00.010-05:00

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The following pictures contain hidden secrets of what can be found out west.

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song of the second: Skinny Love by Bon Iver

book of the moment: IV by Chuck Klosterman

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Location: Portland, Oregon

Date: April 2008

Notes: I guess, sometimes, even the power of God can not stop the power of money.

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Location: Portland, Oregon

Date: April 2008
Notes: What stands out to me most in this picture is the color yellow. Subtlety has always earned my respect.

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Location: Cannon Beach, Oregon

Date: April 2008

Notes: If you've ever seen the movie, The Goonies, then you've seen haystack rock (for you confused people haystack rock, the middle rock, is featured in the movie I just mentioned).

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Location: Portland, Oregon

Date: April 2008

Notes: eat meat.

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"The more one studies the harmony of music, and then studies human nature,how people agree and how they disagree, how there is attraction and repulsion, the more one will see that it is all music." - Hazrat Inayat Khan
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Take this hot shield to block the cold wind.

2007-12-04T18:47:00.000-06:00

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The winter is not cold and shapeless. Find the warm where the cold lies and you will never freeze.
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Song of the second: Ruby, My Dear by Thelonious Monk
Book of the moment: The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
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Location: Bloomington, Indiana
Date: Summer 2005
Notes: In Bloomington, the trees out number the people. In Chicago, this does not happen. Trees we are lacking, people we are not. Bring the trees back, at least for a little while, or else, I think we might all forget about them.

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Location: South Bend, Indiana
Date: Christmas 2005
Notes: He is right behind the Christmas tree. Over near the edge, getting ready to jump out. His big white beard hiding in the needles and pins of light. Crack wide your eyes or else you'll miss him.

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Location: Key West, Florida
Date: March 2006
Notes: Little things really can make movements tip and worlds change.

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Location: Bloomington, Indiana
Date: Fall 2005
Notes: At certain times the only way to see what you're looking at is to find its reflection, otherwise, you could miss everything.

"We followed her up the stairway down a hall painted blue and red that smelled of murder"
-taken from the book, Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski

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The day the camera died.

2007-11-25T15:54:00.000-06:00

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I shook the rust off. I did it. I took new pictures. Then, my camera died.

Song of the second: No Name #2 by Elliott Smith
Book of the moment: Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski
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Location: Niles, Michigan
Date: Thanksgiving Night 2007
Notes: Parking lot. K-mart. Snowstorm. Bright light.

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Location: Nashville, Indiana
Date: Summer 2005
Notes: The country really is a beautiful place.

"It's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black."
-Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap

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Location: Niles, Michigan
Date: Thanksgiving Night 2007
Notes: The snow had fallen, actually, still was falling. Everything seemed alive, held still by a cold shift. Limbs, leaves, flowers and bushes all in accompaniment said nothing. It was the first night that winter waved hello.

Softly spoken decibels.

2007-11-18T11:30:00.000-06:00

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I want to keep this simple. Let the breeze carry these words. Catch them if you can.
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Location: South Bend, Indiana
Date: Thanksgiving 2005
Notes: It has taken me a while to realize, and perhaps see, that art lives within peoples faces. Whether it be perfectly crisp or crushed and blurred. It lives here, in these wrinkles and prickly beards.

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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: Summer 2007
Notes: With each spoke I follow a different path. This photo paints a picture made possible by Harry Nilsson's quote, which I will simply type and leave open for interpretation...

"A point in every direction is the same as no point at all" -taken from the book, The Point!

I'm getting into a habit.

2007-11-07T23:02:00.000-06:00

Briefly, when the camera becomes slow and nothing moves smoothly. While the broken bolt of light that surrounds every line disappears. My theme of repetition slowly slips out of everything that isn't sealed. Such is this moment that must be remembered. Everything is there for a reason, for a glimpse of eyes to find it.

This feeling is what I have. It is what I need.

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Location: Bloomington, Indiana
Date: Fall 2005
Notes: I pulled into a lot, parked, stepped out. From the highway all I could see was a white building in a field. As I moved around the corner I saw this barrel and my camera and hands did the rest to capture it.

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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: Summer 2006
Notes: In Millennium Park there are two pillars with faces. These faces smile and laugh, yet make no sound. Below you can see what these children left behind without ever knowing it. These footprints lasted only minutes, but remain forever.

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Location: Key West, Florida
Date: March 2005
Notes: The best part about this guy, he was standing on top of an 11-foot ladder while juggling.

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Location: Lollapalooza 2006
Date: Summer 2006
Notes: Honestly, as I said before, I am not advertising Budweiser. For some reason it really enjoys being in my pictures, and who am I to say no?

Day two.

2007-11-05T19:14:00.006-06:00

With today, comes three more pictures, and sadly, they are not new. My camera batteries are still charging, and my fingers need more yoga stretches before they will be ready to press down on that button that freezes time.

It's getting colder, and with the changing season comes an escape to music that I have forgotten about. The feelings of wintertime bring with them the need for repetition. I become more homebound during these days. Time passes a little slower. Sentences become shorter. I need less.

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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: Summer 2006
Notes: I live in Lakeview (for those not familiar with Chicago it is about a 15 minute train ride north of downtown) and this building, now being turned into upscale expensive condos, seems radiantly bright during this cloudless summer day.

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Location: Millennium Park, Chicago, Illinois
Date: Jazzfest - Summer 2006
Notes: There is an amazing outdoor amphitheater, Jay Pritzker Pavilion, located in Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. I have seen incredible bands there and spent amazing days sitting in the landscape, fingers wrapped in grass, admiring the skyline. The picure below shows no grass, but what it lacks in grass it makes up for in shadows.

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Location: Millennium Park, Chicago, Illinois
Date: Jazzfest - Summer 2006
Notes: This final picture is not an advertisement for Budweiser, there are so many better beers to drink. However, I did like the simple color scheme that resulted from this, quite American, image. The red, white, and green (I know, I almost said blue too) offset each other well, at least in my opinion.

Complexity does not equal genius, while simplicity does not equal idleness. Take each for what they are and take them as nothing.

I will begin.

2007-11-04T11:30:00.001-06:00

Roughly stated, this is my cure for wintertime. Cure for my feeling of not doing anything artsy (for the record, I was going to put quotes around the word artsy, then realized I hate it when other people do that, it seems...unnecessary and over-used, cliché) with anyone, anything, for some time. The cleaner I needed to wipe the dust off my daily life. Simply stated, I need this more than you.

My goal with this blog is to mainly post new pictures. Nothing old, nothing borrowed, nothing that isn't mine. Below are two non-new pictures. Call it cheating, call it me not having enough energy to turn on my camera and make the lens freeze time. Either way, here is my first posting to a new blog world. More new photos to come...I hope.

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Location: South Bend, Indiana
Date: January 11, 2003
Notes: As I was driving I noticed this sunset, a fiery ball of warmness. I also noticed this beautiful sun slowing sinking behind a trailer park, in its essence, it seemed poorly placed but perfectly shaped. Such hot hues behind a cold scene.

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Location: Kokomo, Indiana
Date: Winter 2005
Notes: I was driving back to I.U. and Kokomo, IN had gotten hit by the meanest of ice storms. This picture was a result. Outside a Taco Bell parking lot, even the trees were to cold to speak.