Waking up at the Texas State Capitol | Day 13 x 33 Sunrises

Waking up at the Texas State Capitol | Day 13 x 33 Sunrises
Well hello there. How are you this Monday morning? What are you up to this week? 
I sat out front the Capitol for a good 15-30 minutes this morning waiting for the sun to peek from behind the clouds and just trying to wake up. (I lost track of time ?) After finishing my homemade almond half-caff latte and recording some more voice memos I felt there was enough blood and oxygen pumping in my brain to actually walk successfully on the wedges I decided to wear. At 7am on a Monday?!
 
So tell me. What's your superpower? How can we change the way we see a situation? Every now and then I'll flip my prime lenses into manual focus and make things intentionally blurry. I've been asked if this was done in post processing and yes you can absolutely do it in post processing (editing the photograph in photoshop, but in my opinion it still can't look as grand. :) In the single class I took in photojournalism school at UT they taught us how to crop in camera. This was back in 2005 on film, so not the whole "spray and pray"; in other words, deliberate shooting, deliberate framing in camera as you're shooting so you're not cropping anything after the fact, mostly shooting with primes, deliberate thought etc etc. 

The two photographs below were shot around f1.4, a few seconds after the other and the only editing I did was brighten it and bump up the contrast. Blur was done in camera. 

It might appear that this is obvious: there's only soooooo many vantage points to the Capitol. Why even shoot it? Couldn't I just have pulled a few pics off the web? Aren't they alllll the same? I thought this as I was shooting, honestly. "Why did I even have to get out of bed?!" ha

But what I find fascinating is that no matter how many people stand in the exact same vantage point, every single one of us will see something different, see what we want to see, see what we choose to see or maybe even not... maybe see only what our subconscious shows to us.

Here... as I walked in a 45 degree arc around the southeast side of the Capitol I took the following shots. Even moving 100 feet to the left what a difference adding a mere two trees into the shot makes! 

So we gather to photograph the same thing, the same location, building, whatever. One of us sees only the trees. The other only sees the architecture of the building. And another the baby squirrel crawling up the tree. How can we see what others see? Can we? Be it even if we're not in their shoes? Can we open up our eyes, our hearts to accept another's vantage point not as incorrect rather merely their vantage point, their life story? 

One of my favorite quotes of all time and that's saying something because I like a shit ton of quotes, is from Brandon Stanton of "The People of NYC".

He said: "I always thought people's stories were more important than people's opinions." 

Stories. Vantage points. Same darn thing. 
Find them. Move your feet. Move your eyes. Move your heart until it's telling you

                    whether or not we're wearing the same shoes, it all comes back to a beating  h e a r t. 
Can we be quiet, still enough to listen to ours  . . . 

Waking up at Graffiti Park | 33 Sunrises x Day 12

Waking up at Castle Hill Graffiti Park | 33 Sunrises x Day 12
(Don't do this. Don't hold a 6 lb camera in your right hand with a zoom lens while you're going 60 down 35 as the sun is rising. Otherwise you might end up with something like this... )

So I climbed to the tippety top of Austin's Graffiti Park and there before me: a sky on fire above and entropy at it's finest, below. 

After deciding holding the DSLR is a bad idea while driving (haha ?) I tried desperately to get to the park before the fire sky vanished. This first shot below was the first in a series of 3 or 4 I shot a few seconds after I got out of the car. Of course the full skyline view wasn't until I climbed the dirt path that lies just to the right of the park. 

I sat perched on the ledge above, feet dangling below, watching the clouds float by. 

At one point I saw someone far below walking and it looked like he was looking at me a few streets down and I thought how odd it must have been to look out on this great big expansive graffiti park and see a girl perched, when barely anyone else was awake. Why shouldn't I wave? So I waved. And he waved back. 

Waking up in a Canoe on Town Lake | 33 Sunrises x Day 11

Waking up at the Texas Rowing Center with Miranda, Eliot, Milo and Plum
Why 33 Sunrises? What is this about? Over the last year and a half I've gone through major life changes and afraid of getting caught in a rut of "words without action" in my business, I needed a creative project to re-energize, bring life back into these bones. I'm 33 this year. I've always loved the sun rise but I wanted a challenge that would actually get me out of bed, to start the day out in a positive way and still have it be a trajectory for my photography business, essentially create content and have fun! I'm on Day 11 of documenting the sun rise, whether just in words or words and photographs and this feels like one of the best decisions I've made in a really long time.

I didn't start out with any grand plans though. To be honest I had no plans. No thoughts of where I would go or what I would see. That's just how I roll. I didn't even think prior "Oh! Let me invite others to join me on this path!" I just wanted to ensure I was jump starting the day, then it occurred to me "Wait... I can invite others on this path, too?! Oh my goodness! How exciting!!"  

This morning was one of my favorites. Miranda runs a lifestyle and sewing blog Live Free Creative Co. She's done everything from make wedding dresses from scratch to flower arrangement DIYs. I draw so much inspiration from her as both a business owner and from the beautiful mother she is, to curious Eliot, big-hearted Milo and darling Plum. What a joy this morning was, following along on their adventure of kayaking Town Lake! Their family is moving to Virginia next month, husband Dave is already working/living there, and M had a bucket list of places they wanted to ensure they visited before they all headed East! 

How serendipitous only the week before I thought "Who can I kayak at sunrise with?!" The kids did so great! The light was otherworldly, of course. The water was peaceful and perhaps in Carli's perfect world, I'd wake up to this flow - the sea, an ocean, this river - every day of my life.

I've lived in Austin since 2005 and I've lost count of the number of times I've kayaked, but I can't ever say I actually stopped to look at the trees on the banks. Usually I'm caught up in the grand scale of it all, the city skyline resting atop the train tracks balanced by the nature we're floating upon. There was a tree so The Notebook-esque, with large branches bending and arching on all sides that just barely touched the surface of the water and the roots were gigantic, sinking deep into the river. 

The first set of shots I took with my Nikon D700 (full frame dslr) when I was just shooting from the dock but the ones when we're all actually on the water were with Mirandas iPhone! I love the iPhone - it's great for portraits - but it didn't do the sun light through this tree justice! In any case it is a moment I shall not forget... 

Thanks Anderson family for sharing Day 11 with me! 
 

Oh those silly swans. For no reason whatsoever as I was shooting they just waddled up and tried to eat my toes! Maybe because they are so long they thought they were worms?? They're just beautiful animals, so graceful and it was great being up so close to those wild beasts... 

Thank you soo much to Mack from the Rowing Center for yelling "Hi!" back every time I run the trail. Thank you to Matt for the kind email and Alvin for setting us up in the canoe and for remembering that Oh my gosh I have been kayaking at TRC for many many years and yes, he has been there for 21 years himself! 

Lots to love about this great city. So many friendly familiar faces.
Good morning, ATX, indeed. 

Waking up at Mt Bonnell | 33 Sunrises x Day 10

Waking at Mount Bonnell Covert Park
Perspective.
Some mornings you wake up ready to conquer.
Some you hit snooze.
This morning, snooze, and now as I sit here wondering where my typing fingers will lead, I want to cower. We're talking about mental illness this morning as the sun rises, something that hits really really close to home. 

Maybe we're all sitting in the dark, and we're just waiting for those bursts of light to show us the way. Maybe those bursts of light are people or books or a song, something, as Kafka says to "Break the frozen sea inside of us." Maybe that darkness is what society calls mental illness, masking as so many names we don't know and maybe we'll never know or fully understand. 

When I hear that word, "mental illness" I immediately think "padded cell". I think oh my gosh these people need to be locked up and who are they and how are they creeping around in our society and we don't know who is really crazy and... then I remind myself that mere depression is a mental illness and attempting suicide is caused by mental illness... and who defines mental illness anyway... and when and why has it ever been a word associated with padded cell and not something that is conquerable,
beyond medicine.

For these things are in my blood because what happens to our family members happens to us, it's a part of our dna. So we must ask ourselves then, are these things not conquerable? Are we destined? Are we mere subjects of destiny? Are we victims of the events, the people our ancestors have become? Will we become them? Are we them?  

Do we control our fate? Are we victims of failed collaborations or events for which we might even be unaware? 
Are we nature? 

I find it so fascinating that Jesus says to the people who are about to stone the harlot woman "Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone." Perhaps a man could only say that if he first understood the gravity in those words. 

We are human. 
I am no psychologist but I know this... 

We are born into this world in circumstances beyond our control.
If this is truth, and the only thing we have control over in this lifetime is our actions to those events, then...

Perhaps mental illness in our society today that is diagnosed with pills and more pills and more pills and more pills ~that we don't even know how they are really affecting us~ is a mere lack of willingness or understanding to look at the cause and not the symptoms of a bigger problem. Maybe we're looking at a tree that is warped that has wrapped itself so perfectly around a fence, but we're all blind to that fence. We just see this marred and mangled tree... and that invisible fucking fence is so prevalent to the person who has become that tree that because of circumstances beyond their control they have had to grown around, so to speak, things they have been perhaps forced to deal with, but hey-- they're still alive and that fence has become a part of their story.

We all have our demons. We have secrets. We have our fences that we have been forced to grow around, to grow through, to become one with. So many of us still, have been blessed to lead lives where those life-defining events are fewer. Thank the Universe for this.
Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone. 
Next time we're looking at something we don't understand, let's hold up that mirror, that great big beautiful mirror that you are human and I am human and there is only this lifetime to ask questions. 

Let us ask so many questions. To the doctors and nurses that shape who we are based on a mere few words scribed on a page for mind-altering, life-altering prescriptions. To the restaurant owners that create menus that fill our bellies that become fuel for our thoughts and actions and ultimately feelings. To the mothers and fathers that don't just make love but create a life with their actions,
that raise a generation that won't just accept the status quo rather
show them
how
to be
 curious.

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars." - Jack Kerouac