Photographs

I like to watch people. (yeah that sounds strange..) Whenever I'm out where there are lots of people; at school, the mall, walking downtown etc. Its just a little quirk I picked up at an early age. I know we all, when children, learn by watching the people around us. We learn what face to make when we're angry, we mimic and we learn in the process. This is when we begin to understand that peoples actions and body language talk also.

I never got out of the habit of watching people, I like to see how different people interact and how they handle situations. I'm always analyzing and categorizing. I love the psychology of people and their emotions and reactions. I find it especially interesting to watch the interaction between parents and children.

You can tell the parents are fed up, especially the new parents, yet their children continue to act hyperactive and, like well, a child. What else can you expect them to do? The parents put on their patient voice and try their best to calm them and get them to act right without causing a scene. But the child doesn't understand, "I've been acting like this the whole day? What happened?" is what they think. So both the child and parent get frustrated, and the the parent believes the child to be misbehaving, the child is just confused, and onlookers chalk it up to bad parenting.

A vicious cycle.

When I was younger I saw so much, so I continued to look and watch. Then I discovered photography and I began to take pictures of everything I thought was interesting, or what I deemed beautiful. My family was confused and often angry that I was "wasting" pictures on people I didn't know, and "its sweet that you like nature so much...but really...this many pictures of our farm?" They didn't seem to comprehend (and still don't :P) that I refused to take fake pictures.

I hate when you see those photos of families smiling and posing on their vacations. I want to take pictures of my family smiling, but I want real smiles, not artificial "oh, here's a camera. I have to be happy" smiles. Because I know from personal experience that a family could have just been fighting, yet they put on those smiles for the camera. I want real pictures. I can't stand to see something, I know is false, being shown around to other people as if we are the perfect family.

Its all lies. I want reality. I know, however, that there are those that hold unto false memories to make them feel better. I guess we all desire the comfort of fantasies when we have no comfort of our own...but that still doesn't make it any less delusional.

So a lot of pictures are going to posted on my blog as part of my story. Some will be of my family like the two above, some will be of random people, and most will be of nature.

Nature and plants are the most honest things on Earth, and they give back as much as they recieve.