so a place holder will have to do. my home machine is off (dolla' bills, you know) and im in south carolina.

[ed]

wandering around Split, Croatia we happened upon this surrealist (to me) scene. im not sure what i expect to be happening, but its coming any second.

one clock reads 5:32. the other seems to read 7:30, but it is unclear. the bowls and cat dont seem to show any sort of current time.

open air market in Rubik, Albania.

I have been thinking a LOT lately about what I really want. A LOT. I seem to work in an industry that provides me a means of producing more or less whatever I want. Very often there are subtle restrains imposed by client requirements, matters of taste, lighting conditions, weather, etc...but on the whole I am hired because of how I see things and execute. And when I am working on personal projects I only answer to myself which is even MORE freeing. But I find that this tends to lead me down paths that frustrate me. An image driven career for me is really all I can imagine (that is, taking photographs. I'm obviously not tooooo into image. Have you seen my clothes?) but sometimes I feel a certain nag of narcissism—especially with the work I do for myself that isn't part of a specific project. I get pretty concerned with the What and Why I am shooting pretty often which is pretty annoying when on the surface all I wanna do is take photographs, but in the ubiquitous, universal task to find meaning in what one does in life, it seems more reasonable for me to try to Answer these questions instead of sweeping them under the rug.
 
 
I'll digress a bit. I'm trying to cull down my real desires to a solid core that can be applied to ALL the work I do and really all of life. I've made efforts so far to intentionally do some things I hear people later in life (ie, kids, mortgages, old age) regret not having done. I just got back, as you likely know if you're reading this in the first place, from traveling eastern Europe with two friends. Why? Why the hell not. Now, it is true it puts a serious strain on my resources to jaunt off for three weeks and basically ONLY spend money, not to mention travel costs, but in the continuing years of my life I have to think it was the better idea. I figure, why make money if you don't do something you want with it. A bit selfish maybe..and perhaps not the best financial plan. But here I am off topic again.
 
 
I'm not saying I have the answers I'm looking for (like, for instance, why is there a "w" in the word answer) but I will be looking for them. I know the work I need to do is beyond myself. I need to find out what that means. I have always felt a need for my work to be "important". I should work out what exactly that means too.
 
 
Hopefully this note isn't too much like Philosophy 101.
 
 

just in case

one of my favorite parts of the whole idea of a POPTPOP is the before and after. this is an "after" shot that details a bit of glory / lameness of digital cameras. there wouldn't be an "after" without digital (except polaroid of course, but its been out of the vogue a la mode for a good while) but i feel like there are more classically awful random photos of people standing next to stuff.

anyway...this the aftermath of a picture taken of someone.

who says you can't have fun in serbia? i mean other than NATO.

a rare night time poptpop

this is an image that is much better larger.

to see it larger, see this link

brilliant.

Alright so we are back! The travel plan didn't exactly follow our loose schedule and we missed out on Poland and Ukraine BUT!...we added Serbia (meh..I'm glad we went though) and Albania. Albania was 100% a highlight. So many strange and wonderful / terrifying things happened there. Photos will for sure follow very soon and I am hoping for a new section or two out of this work.

More to follow!

Oh, and I started yet another photo blog called poptpop. It stands for Pictures of People Taking Pictures of People. It's a for-fun thing for me. A little place to put the tens of photos I've taken of...yeah.

More very soon

picture of person taking picture of me taking picture of him

[i consulted the board and it passed unanimously that this counts as a poptpop as its a picture of him taking a picture of someone [me], though its a bit less like the other photos.]

i will balance this one with the photo he actually took of me.

vs

pomtpoptpom
picture of me taking picture of person taking picture of me