chapter 335

Is it your best work?

1/5/2014

life lessons from a junkie

The picture above is my best picture of a Junco coming to our backyard feeder to date, but it took a lifetime to achieve. I can do better, but with time. Some of these guys were born and raised in the back yard, we watched their mothers mouth feeding them as they flapped their little wings.

Yes, I also fed, watered and photographed birds (Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash model) a half century ago and am still doing it. Always trying to tell a story with pictures using subject, background and foreground for context. We got these 120 day old pheasants as baby chicks from the Conservation Dept and Cornell University to raise and release and also helped re-establish wild turkeys one year. Our success rate was pretty high getting a buck for each one. In my mind's eye I'd tried to capture the bird's eye view of the little guys feeding at the trough inside their chicken wire pen with the milkweeds. This was the best close-up focus I could get from my Brownie camera. I may not have created the best backyard bird sanctuary now in 2014, but they keep coming back to me, or am I coming back to them?

In Breaking Bad, junkie loser Jesse is the hard luck guy but with a caring heart. He revealed in a group therapy session that he was inspired to look within himself and up his game when his woodshop teacher asked, "Is that the best you can do?" After his illicit meth cooking, taking his knocks, and squandering his millions of dollars, he returns to that inner desire to create something satisfying from wood. There is genius in this simple inquisitive phrase; a theme that carries throughout the show. Producer Vince Gilligan has to be recognized for this masterful creative effort.

In the end times, Dad also had this inner desire to create his best work in wood. This larger "last wooden bowl" that Dad made was still in the rough on the lathe at the time of his departure. My neighbor greatly admired the raw piece and was proud to do the finishing lathe work here.

The same message applies readily to photography where it is so easy to shoot more pictures. I had asked Professional photographer Tom Watson for some words of wisdom for my photo club. He told me he was inspired by this same "critique" used by his college photography class instructor used each week on their photo assignments.

My Hawkeye CAMEROSITY date code CCRO means it was manufactured November 1956.