"There's a Madness in Us All"

During a petulant time last year, I bought with my own money a DSLR camera. I read about two chapters from the booklet included. Laziness and anxious curiosity decided the rest of my education would be done with experience. That's not really it at all, half the time I'm not quite sure what wills my actions. However this year, entirely different from the last, I asked my coworker Brittani if she'd like to pose for the first portraits I would take in just under three years. With her immediate and anxious yes, all that ailed us was the perilous task of a common day off, social lives (rather hers than mine) free, adequate weather, the permission of my gatekeepers slash other employees slash grandparents. The sixth day day of this month, last Saturday, the stars finally frickin aligned. 

 Only very VERY slight edits made, all taken in manual mode, with natural light. We eventually had to chase the sun down to Hill Top Mountain, by the cemetery my mother's parents are buried, by the airport (landscape I'd dreamnt of months before I'd ever seen it) Where a solitary sunflower stalk stood, and the sun shone its sublime solace. It was a lovely contrast to the Hot Springs Park where a creepy man lurked and immediately offered his sad sack story, (okay, I'm just impatient with older men who criticize you on your film camera, despite you hoisting your digital that cost at least three hundred dollars more than his P.O.S and whoopee for having a 2 gb memory card and being three years cancer free and I'm really sorry your daughter got food poisoning from Burger King and had to have a piece of her intestine removed because it literally died from it. Congrats on keeping your diabetes in control and yes I've been checked for it and wow my grandma has congestive heart failure but I'm not going to talk about it to a complete stranger.)

It was lovely day all in all, I'm pleased with the result of my totally amateur portraits. I revel in the challenge of channeling my artistic ability, of which I have much doubt at times, terribly so, but there is a madness in us all. I want every shade of it shown, every which way I can show it.