Sydian Photography

I've said before that I wish to be the ripple in the water, changing perspectives, sharing how I see the world. Recently, I've dedicated quite a bit of time to building a photography site to do just that. I'm hoping to get some of these pictures published in local and travel magazines, but also I wanted a semi-professional site to be able to show my work. Check it out at Sydian Photography. I'm not sure if I've really been blindsided by my passion yet, but over the last month and a half I've spent nearly as much time on my photos and art projects as I have on my two jobs. I even splurged and purchased a few more toys for my camera, including a remote shutter. I'm planning on teaching myself a new technique called High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, and hopefully will have some examples to post soon. In the meantime, if you'd like to see what it can look like, check out Stuck in Customs.

I've spent the last few months hording my quarters from tips (most of the drinks cost $3.25, etc, so I make about $20 bucks a week in quarters). I decided that when the crown bag was full, which equals roughly $400, I'd hit the road visiting people, adventuring, and taking pictures. The bag is nearly full so I took some time off work and planned out a trip. I'm leaving Saturday, for the Denver area, and next week I'll be in Texas. I'll be coming back via Arizona and Utah, stopping wherever I see a good picture, and hopefully adventuring on the way. On the agenda so far; skydiving at Mile High, a waterpark somewhere, climbing hopefully, Bryce canyon, the slot canyons, probably Zion national park, and visiting friends and family along the way. Any suggestions?

Back to work. <3

I don't know why I jumped...

"I don't know why I jumped, but I jumped. As I fell I could feel the air being sucked from of my lungs." - Adbusters

When I first saw those words, the white text running along the edge of a black page framed by white vines, I understood. I felt a kinship with the anonymous writer. This was years ago, before i ever jumped off that bridge. It wasn't the description of a physical act that I related to, but the metaphor; that exhilaration of giving yourself up to something so completely, on a whim. It's how I felt when I decided I wanted to visit the Middle East while in the bathroom of a San Francisco bar. It's the simultaneous euphoria and release of the moment I decided to give up on my psychology degree in my last semester of college. "Real troubles in life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind the blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday." I think the same is true for the crystal moments, the 180 degree rotations in how you view the world, the epiphanies. That thought is my calming breeze these days, as I ache to jump again. I try not to look for my new path, my epiphany, as I wander from daydream to daydream patiently waiting to be blindsided by purpose and passion.

On top of the world, looking up

So the day after my last "adventure," I had a minor mishap while gardening. I know, seriously, who gets injured gardening... I mean, what's the worst you can do; blisters on your hand from the shovel, a sunburn perhaps? How about put a hole in your foot about a half inch in diameter? Now how in the world, you might say, do you manage that in a safe, friendly garden? Well, I am my mother's daughter (sorry Mom, it needed to be said), and my roommate is a blossoming woodsmen. He buried a deer skull in our yard and in my haste to attack the weeds I forgot about it and sort of stomped on the antlers. Not to worry, however, two weeks later and I'm up and at em, looking for those adventures, and a bit sore today from my most recent one.

I spent Sunday with those same lunatic engineering friends, this time climbing, crawling, scrambling, and sliding around a local rock climbing site known as Frog Rock for the frog-like shape one of the larger protrusions. However we weren't exactly rock climbing; we were looking for a cave rumored to be somewhere around the top of Frog Rock. As a novice climber and newbie adventurer, I'd never been to the site before, so both the view and the hike were new to me. The approach is about a half-mile long, nearly vertical path requiring a lot of crawling and assistance from nearby rocks and trees. After crawling through a rocky crag to a halfway point, past the first few bolted climbing routes, my four comrades had two different ideas about how to reach the cave and set off in pairs in opposite directions leaving me to choose who to follow. Since I was already closer them, I followed Simon and Eric.

Perhaps, in retrospect, this was not the wisest choice since they make up the slightly crazier half of the group. They warned me that they didn't know if their path would even work, but I'm nothing if not stubborn and I resisted their attempts to let me escape. We walked, crawled and climbed up the ridge, at times only a few feet wide, and reached one of the highest points only to realize we were above the cave and were subsequently forced to backtrack to find a route down. At one point we came to a gap that was too far to walk or jump across and had to climb about eight feet down a blind ledge and back up the other side.

We found the cave and explored a bit. The first couple "rooms" were big enough to stand in leading off into smaller sections and even a short tunnel leading into another small "room". After nearly trapping myself in a snow tunnel as a kid I'm not so fond of tight spaces, so I enjoyed the sun while the boys got muddy digging deeper into small tunnels in search of more rooms. Eventually we braved the steep downhill back to the car, sliding and slipping much of the way down. Between clambering around the rocks and bushes in shorts, and a short fall on the way down, my legs look like I tried to Indian leg-wrestle a bobcat, but damn it was fun. There are a some pictures posted in the "adventures" album. None of me, as I had the camera most of the time. Well, back to work, I'm supposed to be writing a manuscript... oops.

Leap of faith

So I suppose this blog doesn't need to be just about my travels, there are other 'somedays', other experiences. In lieu of a true savings goal (no specific trip planned, though I'm putting away a bit of cash each month), I've decided my goal for the moment is to do all of those things I always said I'd get around to doing. To this end, I bought a climbing harness and shoes last month and some basic gear. I'm determined to spend a couple hundred dollars investing in mini-adventures like this. I've only gotten to go climbing once since I bought it, so far, but I did find another use for my harness yesterday.

A few of my friends are engineers. They also are adventure enthusiasts, adrenaline junkies you could say. Combine the two and you get some adventurous, yet rather safe, guys. They figured out last summer how to improvise a sort of bungee jumping system. Rather than that bouncy cord, however, they use climbing rope. This means that you don't bounce once the rope goes taunt, rather you swing like a pendulum. Eight of us got together yesterday morning, drove the hour to an old (unused) train bridge near Pipestone, strapped in, and yelled and screamed all the way down. Actually, I did very little screaming myself, just once choice word as I jumped backwards off the ledge. We also set up a bit differently and jumped from a lower point. Someone had the idea of trying a "superman" jump. Basically, take two harnesses, and put them on backwards, one on your hips and one on your shoulders. Strap in with both so you can hang lying flat out stomach down like superman flying in the old special effects. I tried this off the half jump we set up, no free fall to speak of, just swinging. The guys got a bit more adventurous and superman'd from the top of the bridge, but I don't have pictures of that as I was busy hitting rocks with hammers to make them ring. o.O

There are more pictures in the new album, Adventures in Life. One of the girls with us was planning to write an article for a local magazine possibly using some of my pictures. I'll let ya know when it shows up.

Sequin daydreams

The tea in this village has so much sugar, it is like imbibing liquid candy. Micheal suggested that this is to compensate for the lack of sweets since the village has no shops. The women in Syria often dress in vibrant colors adorned with glitter or sequins. I wonder if they are compensating for the restrictive lifestyles they lead in the name of their religion.

I'm not claiming they subjugated by the men of their lives; I'm not of the opinion that a cultural norm requiring women to dress modestly or cover their hair is something for foreigners to judge as discrimination or abuse. And in Syria, many of the women work outside the home or attend universities living rather independent lives. But I wonder what it must be like to watch American movies knowing they are not socially allowed to live such moments. There is a thrill to going on a date, dancing with someone you've just met, sunbathing, walking around your house naked, or even just feeling a warm wind on your back that is rare at best for women in many cultures. With the ease of communication between societies, satellite TV and foreign movies, Facebook, a woman from a society such as this is now able to see so many of those things only to realize such simple pleasures may not be open to them. I remember how liberating it felt, on the first warm day after I returned home, to walk outside in a tanktop and long cotton skirt and feel the cloth rustling at my feet, the sunshine and the breeze dancing on my shoulders. It was the first time in four months my arms had been bare to the open air and sun.

Ripples

My mother requested recently that I keep writing on here, even though my adventures are less worldly these days. I have hesitated, wondering what I have to share. I left with the intent of being able to come home and tell people, show them, that the Middle East is not this scary place of car bombs and terrorists. I wanted to be that person that my friends know so they can say "this friend of mine was actually there and she said ____." I wanted to change some opinions, even if I was only a ripple. Ripples spread you know.

Now that I'm back, I find myself often wary of talking about my travels. I was warned by a friend in Syria who's daughter faced a similar situation when she came to the US originally. She found she became defensive and frustrated with American views of the region, to the point of anger and arguments. I headed his warning, but it is hard. I find myself defensive, passionate, and frustrated but I am trying my best to reign in the anger and deflate the arguments. I want to be that ripple, but I am afraid of the responses that will incite my passions and manifest arguments.

I watched the news with Iman and her mother, and though I little understood the dialog, I understood the videos of dead children in Gaza, killed by bullets, not shrapnel or rocket fire. I watched Syrian men and women weep openly as they watched the death toll rise while the violence continued with no sign of ebbing. One night, about a month after I returned home, I looked up those videos online. I watched one of them over and over, tears on my cheeks, feeling helpless and frustrated. So yes, I'm passionate and probably a little biased. I know, logically, that had I been in Israel and seen images of children killed by a Qassam rocket I'd probably have opposite passions and biases. Perhaps I'd see events differently. But "we see things not as they are, but as we are." I can not change what I see.

I saw an acquaintance a couple of weeks ago for the first time since I returned. She asked where I'd been and I told her. She cracked a smile and said "Cool, did you get bombed?" I was at a loss for how that statement was funny. I hate to admit, but I did a poor job of checking my anger on that one. I'll have to try better in the future. It's tiring sometimes, answering questions that imply such unfounded biases, but I realize that this is exactly what I need to do. Those biases only seem so unfounded to me because I have spent the last couple of years learning about the culture, the history, and the peoples of the Middle East, not even including the months I spent there. I have to try harder, if I want to be that ripple.

So here's to that. I've been planning this whole time to do something with my pictures, not for financial reasons, I'm not looking to become a famous photographer or any such thing but simply to get them seen, to expand the ripple. A picture is worth a thousand words, so they say. I hope to say some with mine. Its time I take this project off the back burner and start dedicating some serious time to it, so here goes. I'll update this site with photo projects as I finish them, or perhaps even as works-in-progress, and updates on my luck/tenacity in getting them shown publicly somehow. Until then, thanks to those who have followed my posts during my trip; it helped, immensely, knowing other people were traveling with me.

Cold Calls

I got a cold call today from the Democratic National Committee, looking for donations. After reading the scripted rant about the failings and vindictiveness of the Republican party (how they ruined the economy are refusing to help fix it because they want to see the Democratic administration fail), I kindly but firmly let them know that they had this whole pitch wrong. First, the call came up as Unavailable; bad idea. Unavailable call asking for my bank account sounds like a scam to me. Second, assuming this wasn't a scam but simply a poorly designed funding campaign, the people who voted for Obama are not likely to want a bi-partisan pitch about how the other side is wrong. We voted for change (yes I know how cliche that has become), we voted for a government that would work together, for an administration that would cross party lines as well as social lines, working with the Republicans and foreign dignitaries rather than against them. Once I corrected the poor man's script, I explained that for these two reasons, I would not be likely to donate money to this campaign for the simple reason that his script outlined exactly the type of government I do not want.

However, I did get some humor out of the conversation. While looking for another page in his script, he attempted to be conversational, asking me "How was the skiing and snowboarding in Bozeman this winter?" My response had myself and a co-worker grinning like fools. "I wouldn't know, as I spent my winter in the Middle East."