mental garbage

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I'm not a writer nor a photographer - I'm a storyteller.

I'll paint you a story, write you a picture and weave an art of worded pixels. The world is my palette and through the canvas of words and pictures, i will tell stories so poignant the world will stop to listen.

So the weekend was awesome. The shoot at PF's place went pretty well and i'm satisfied with the quality of the pictures, though i think i'd stick to the 24mm instead of the 35mm the next time for the extra depth of field. Kristy was such a diva, but an utterly adorable one at that. The problem with family portraits is that it's so hard to filter out the photos during post-processing cos the kids are always so darn endearing in the frames.

The belated birthday party at Red Dot was nice. Close friends, not so awesome beer and lots of laughs. Am i the only one that thinks Red Dot beer tastes like long kang water?

I guess i was pretty disappointed with not making it to the top 3 for the Golden Point Awards. Well, i guess my story wasn't all that fantastic. It's funny how i don't/hardly write anymore, considering how passionate i was about it a few years back. I still love to create, but the words don't come to me now. Priorities change. Interests change. Now i just want to shoot more, build a portfolio and secure myself a lifeboat - in the event i get sick of this janitor's job and leave this forsaken place devoid of meritocracy and racial equality.

Would you be so kind as to let me tell your story?

An act of God, a violent shiver
Broken dreams and shattered bones;
a mangled mess of bloody matter
Blaring sirens and hysterical moans,
too many have met their maker.

Too often, too deadly -
China, Myanmar, Samoa, Indonesia
lives are heavened too suddenly
Let's do what we can, light a brazier
the victims need hope, desperately

And so i lament. I didn't win the $9.7 million Toto jackpot. There is so much i could've achieved with that kinda money - no more headaches over raising funds for the next wedding party, no more need to settle with 3rd party lens and an antique camera body and finally, the chance to see the world before this life passes me by.

Money.

I never used to think much of it. I aspired to be the passionate fool who would eat dirt off the curb so long as i stayed true to my calling. People change, i guess. I change. Priorities shift and now i find myself scouring forums and passing the word to secure myself more freelance writing/photography jobs to supplement my average income. Why? Cos money opens up a world of endless possibilities. It's not shallow to think that way.

It's called being practical.

The last two shoots for Angie and her sister went pretty well and i'm actually very pleased with the results. I guess those jobs gave me the gut to wanna go out and do more. But then arises the problem - competition. Well, not just plain competition but CHEAP competition. For the past few weeks i have been surveying the competition and they are sometimes decent, but mostly crap. Honestly, you can't really except to get much outta a $488-a-wedding-photographer.

So i price myself according to what i think i'm worth (and really, it's not a lot) and i find the inbox empty. Sure i've got some more jobs coming up through word of mouth but that's no way to sustain a constant side income. Don't get me wrong, i'm not lamenting. I'm just trying to kickstart this dead engine of passion before it becomes lost to the abyss of ennui and procrastination.

The results for the Golden Point Awards will be out in a few weeks and honestly, i really wanna win it. No just for the $5000 prize money, but more for the boost of confidence; the shot of self-recognition that i've been craving for like a fucked up druggie; the one important pat on the shoulder.

To picture or to write, whatever. I yearn to create. I need to manifest what i see in my head, even if the world does not understand. This is what makes me.

This is what keeps me alive.

LJ is kinda dead, no?

Those whose life stories i love to read no longer blog. Everyone's just tweeting these days.

I think i'll write a story in tweet language. If you would like to read the summarised version, just use tinyurl, that's one boomz application.

I'm very happy with the end product from Angie's wedding, much thanks to the awesome 24mm F1.4L lens louis lent me. No flash? No fret. Sweet piece of glass indeed.

Another random flicker of curiosity was all that was needed to get me writing again. I've stopped for a while - too long a while. But i guess it's always good to jump start the rusty engine of words once in awhile.

Photojournalism - its future, its viability and its challenges in this age of utter media saturation. I Googled my question and Eric Schmidt along with his trusty crew again provided the answers. As usual, there are the two different camps of thought. The dichotomy. The divide. The discourse.

Me? I think photojournalism will never die. Newspapers are dying, true. But as much as this technological age pits photojournalism against its arch nemesis Video, there are elements in a still image which will always enable it to stand on its own. I don't want to write a freaking essay on this but there is one key element which i think is the saving grace of pictures if all else fails. My friends, meet Poignancy.

Sure, everyone loves a good movie with powerful action sequences. We love action. We love seeing things as they happen. Unless we're going to be rapidly flipping a wad of pictures, we're never to experience the same sort of dynamism. But you see, what pictures lose in the form of a constantly moving reality is also its redeeming factor.

Much is lost in the ever-moving reel. Poignancy finds its habitat only in the stillness of the frame because inaction forces one to channel all focus onto the image at hand. Most movies have a poignant scene where everything goes into slow-mo or sometimes still action. With the right composition, lightning and subject, i believe a still image is inadvertently more powerful than anything.

There's a hell lot of focus on the multimedia industry now. Pictures and text and audio all create a three dimensional multimedia experience which defines the age we live in now. Some might say multimedia involvement is photojournalism's last ditch attempt to hold onto its legitimacy to exist, but i certainly beg to differ. This world's all about marketing now. It's about selling out, about giving clients what they want, about the need to generate revenue. After all, money does, unfortunately, make the world go round. So this new fad to multimedia, maybe it's here to say, maybe it's just a stepping block to something more technologically bizzare, we just have to wait and see. But the fact of the matter is that this is the way to go right now.

So that's the exact reason why pictures have to enter this collaboration with its neighbours of text, video and sound - currency. Let's not confuse survivability with the need to keep up to date with the times. Photojournalism is doing just the latter, because it will always survive. In-existence is impossible because losing the element of a still image in life is, to me, unthinkable.

Let's talk abit on the issue of newspapers. Sales are dwindling and people are closing shop as technology mercilessly ploughs through the rituals of newspaper reading. Fading into oblivion are the generations of people whom wake up in the morning and head straight for the papers and a cup of coffee. Everything is online now, even i, as much as i hate to admit it, get my news updates on the blackberry before i head to work.

The world is becoming an amazing, yet horrifyingly scary place to live in. Passwords after passwords keep us logged on to different online accounts. Everything is virtual now. The touch of the tangible is inevitably becoming a thing of the past. I find E-books, the latest recruit in the vanguard against the demolition of paper-made books, the final war cry before technology launches its final assault on the crumbling castle of our rudimentary rites.

But amidst all the fighting, pictures can still prevail. Everyone loves a good picture to match a story. Everyone needs to see something to relate to a news story. Still images are eternal, they are immortal.

Or at least that's what i want to believe.

So i'm tasked to document the proposal, not that i'm ever going to forget it but ho well.

11.34pm - I arrive at Char's place and after our usual smoke and chat at the staircase i decided to commence Operation White Bling. It was to be a purely covert operation with no one except one colleague knowing anything about it. So a little backgrounder: A few days before the operation i had this idea of place the ring within a book - you know, those kinda spy flicks when people hide their pistols in books...yeah you get the drift.

I need a hard-cover book because i was pretty convinced that anything flopsy would result in the ring falling through the pages even before i could spring any surprise. So i found a large hard-cover in the form of The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie. Don't get me wrong, he's an amazing writer. But his style of writing is just too...longwinded for me. Lovely imagery and stuff but after a few chapters, you kinda get the GET ON WITH THE DAMN STORY ALREADY feeling.

11.35pm - Ring in place, i set out to deploy the decoy - an old picture of me and char. I told her something like "Hey i found this picture of us when i was still really really skinny".

She fell for it.

So target was ensnared in my decoy, and it was moments before she would see the surprise.

Not.

Target became too distracted and was yabbering on and on about how she used to be so skinny too. Then as i stood there in certain bewilderment, she just asked what the hell i was laughing at. Puzzled, she shoved the picture back into the page and closed the book.

ZOMG anti-climax.

Anyways, i demanded she open the book again and this time round, she finally saw the bling nestled in the little cubic crevice. So i followed protocol - kneeled and asked the question and she laughingly agreed. Doh.

At least the ring didn't fall out of the book.

It's 2.25am and i'm exhausted. I only managed to pull off a 3-hour nap after my overnighter so i really dont understand why the heck im still awake. Insomnia eats the mind, again. Char's sleeping now and she's probably going to be shocked when she reads im sitting in her computer room typing this blog entry. Argh why cant i sleep??

So anyway the story's done, much to my amazement. I hadn't been able to write anything since like 2 mths ago and for the first time ever i actually managed to just churn out words, as forcibly as it was, to form a somewhat coherent story. I'm glad 80% of the piece is fresh, in the sense that it was written for the first time. I initially planned on tweaking an old piece for submission but as it turns out, i ended up doing a major overhaul.

I've waited for this competition for 2 years now. I'm not harbouring high hopes of winning anything but hey, i guess i could eventually look back and say i did it. I mean, what's the point of waiting 2 years for this and not submit a single word? doh.

I think i'd better go TRY and get some shut eye. It's going to be a long day tomorrow.

But maybe after i scout for a replacement lens on CS or eBay....

Tamron 17-50 or Canon 17-40? ARGH

Fuck.

I'm sorry but that's as far as i can go with thinking of a modern day cuss word. Yes, that's how constipated i feel. It's almost as if all the vocabulary i have learnt throughout this twenty seven years have been sucked dry by a vacuum set on dismembering my ambitions.

Four days to the submission deadline and i'm stuck with a blank palette. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

Oh god, what's another good word to describe emptiness?

Maybe it's the environment, the phase in life, the state of mind. I don't know, words don't come to me anymore. Well actually they do, but they sure don't make any sense at all. You see, writing a story isn't just about stringing words together to make a grammatically coherent sentence.

It's about the storyline, the tease, the build up and the magnificent climax. Everyone loves a good orgasm. It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand and you fall into the abyss of a serene obliviousness for those few precious moments.

It's not hard to get a hard-on. Excuse me, i mean "to start writing". I mean, i can write a story about how an apple met an orange anytime, but the fact of the matter is that it won't quite be a story, no? I'm trying desperately to recall how i started writing back then in university, when I was seemingly as powerful as Magneto from X-Men. Words, phrases, puns and metaphors flew to me at the simple exertion of my will.

I stare at the blank screen in front of me, channelling my utmost concentration toward the keyboard. I type, i type harder, i type like a madman on a mission to convince the nurse that he's really quite sane. Two minutes later, Miss Backspace comes along and i practically fall in love with her, much to the dismay of all the other lovely alphabets i've made swoon over me.

I'd probably have more luck shooting myself dead with an empty revolver than getting a story out by Friday.

So someone, please, shoot me.