So this is funny. The whole concept is warped, in my humble opinion. Sunset Magazine named Erie, Colorado as one of the West's best suburbs. Ha ha ha!! Now, if you've ever been to Erie, it's one of those creepy Stepford-Wives kind of nasty-ass subdivisions just sitting in a big pile of mud out on the prairie. If what's important to you is a grossly oversized yet sadly unoriginal tract home painted one of three approved shades of taupe, slapped up as quickly as possible with 300 others, because you don't want to spend an equal amount of money on a smaller, maybe older home in an established town -- you'll love it! I bet you'll also love your 45-minute commute each way to work that robs you of not only hard-earned money in gasoline, but valuable time you could be spending sleeping, with your children, learning something new, or any number of other more useful things. I'm always amazed at the way people choose to live that seems so ass-backwards to me. I mean, not that I think everyone has to think like me... thank god they don't! But I just can't relate to some folks' priorities. When I'm on my death bed, am I really going to be happy that I spent 85% of my adult life working and driving to work because I felt the shallow compunction to own a cardboard box out in the boonies -- and to basically destroy a beautiful piece of prairie or farmland -- rather than a more modest house in a town close to my job? What the hell.
Anyway, what good is a blog if you can't rant like a pretentious know-it-all? :-)
But the flip side of this assignment is that I actually made a couple of nice photos of an Erie family:
Tyler Hahn, 8, left, runs ahead of his brother, Nathan, 6, his sister Trinity, 3, and mother Kim as the family walks to a nearby park in Erie's Vista Ridge subdivision, where they moved two years ago. Sunset Magazine recently named Erie one of the West's best suburbs for quality of life.
Nathan Hahn, 6, center, laughs as his mother, Kim, spins him around in a swing at a park in Erie's Vista Ridge subdivision.
I especially liked the top photo because it showed good reaction skills on my part. I didn't even look through the camera. As soon as I saw the boy start to run, I just whipped up my hand and shot from the hip.
Aspiring photographers always freak out when I advise them to do a whole series of photos without looking through the viewfinder, because they're so attached to the idea that their "lofty thought process" is what makes them photographers. While this may be true in other photographic disciplines, photojounalism is all about reacting to what's actually happening in the world, and trying to communicate the feeling of a place or event. I feel like I got that across here, at least on some level.
Okay, I'll shut my pie hole now!! :-)
1 comment:
HEY!! waitaminute... *I* lived in Erie. In fact, I think the property I lived in is in the background of that first shot!
oh yea, my x picked out that place. nevermind.
Good stuff, as usual!!
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