BRAINING AGAIN PART II… AFTER A STROKE

I am well into my research project at the university, it’s on the impacts that full frame DSLR cameras vs 35mm analogue Rangefinder cameras have on the content and representation of photo feature stories.

Yes I still get tired quickly and emotional aphasia is a fact of my life, but I am in a place where with effort I can see light at the end of the road.

I have found the benefit of a bit of exercise when I wake up in the morning, it is good for my body and mind, It wipes away the feelings of down and replaces them with ones of up.

I done what the doctor ordered; I have lost 17 kg of weight, my blood pressure is back down, I have taken some life style changes into the way I deal with the stresses of life, and my doctor says I have another twenty or thirty years ahead of me and it could be just a wayward bus that ends it all for me in the end…

JR

BRAINING AGAIN…

I went to classes at the university again this morning, my lobes are functioning in their own ways, as is now the fashion that I am getting used too… The left side is absorbing the material presented in the seminar, with a bit of short term loss. I am still able to recall the content covered by the lecturer at the desk in front of the class…

right side is able to interact with the rest of the class and also be a witty as well…

I am also able to deal with more then one issue at a time, that is, my life issues as well as my academic ones…

I started karate lessons last week and its great for my physical rehab, what is different post stroke is the way I will change topics fast, what I am thinking about at the time will be coming out in words and it will come out unfiltered as well. the ability to think and write as gaining strength as the days go by, this is good as I have some academic papers to write over the next few weeks!

JR

 

 

I ALSO HAVE A “SMALL TUPPERWARE” COLLECTION ON MY DESK

what is so special about you that somebody out there will spend their hard-earned money on your photography…

 

 

A NEW YEAR, A NEW LIFE, NEW PROJECTS AND NEW WAYS OF DOING THINGS… ;-D JR

Okay, 2012 was the mother of years in many ways. I started to blog, I started my honours in media studies, and thought my life would end when I had a stroke. What ended was the ways I used to do things, what has begun is a whole new lifestyle with new hope and new opportunities.

Too my photojournalism I have added family portraiture, I am continuing to facilitate photographic training workshops that I have been doing for a while and adding to these programs new ones that are more about the image and less about the camera. In these new workshops I deal with people who use cameras that are built into mobile phones and simple point and shoot compact cameras. The emphasis in these workshops is the gaining of better images and less getting tied up in camera technology, which is what I always have thought a photo workshop should be about anyway.

Photography is changing in the way that we see images. There is the “new media” and the “web” a photograph is  not just some thing on paper anymore, it is about the way an individual sees what they see!

Almost anybody can be a photographer, almost everybody has access to a camera of some sort and many of these cameras are simple to operate, highly automated, and it is for the photographer to adapt to the way these work and then produce these  new images. What my role in these workshops is, is to produce in these photographers, more depth of substance to their images and increase their visual communication skills.

The family portraits that I am doing for clients takes the visual story telling of my photojournalism and melds it with an appealing style that is attractive to this market…

JR

12 WEEKS LATER…

I am in the dark room, and I have no idea why I am here. The world is spinning and I am sitting on a stool and leaning up against the work surface  and the body of a student.

I hear the voices of the rest of the class, my mouth and brain has disengaged, and I can’t make myself understood.

My left arm and leg has gone limp, I am on a hospital gurney, there are people around, I must be in a hospital. But there is no pain!

It has taken this long until I have felt in a place to blog again, I have talked about the process I find myself in, and in a way the new life, body and brain.

the thought of just dealing with the user name and passwords was a bit too much. But I take pictures and I discuss this photographic passion still, my left hand now takes hold of the M4 and Nikon still, I talk rather than lecture. I have got back into working again but I take naps when I tire.

One thing is that I have lost some weight, I eat healthy, I am weary of stress. I take things a day at a time and my right hand does most of the typing! I took too long before I realised what I am up against, it’s not just getting back to the same levels again.
It’s about a new way of life and doing things, or I could have another stroke one day…

THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICES

Just who do you sit at the feet of and learn the ways of the world, and while there, who can you look back afterwards and say it was at the side of this bright soul that I learned what it is that I now know?

What magic was it that you learned to dabble with and how did it affect the way that you as a bright soul too, now go out into the light and play at making your own bright images?

What it the greater, the institution or the mentor? It is a bit of a chicken and egg issue, as do the great institutions of learning have the bright souls, and when you move on do you say it was the institution or the soul that you came along side of?

While we say that we learn the ways of the world, while there, do we get to judge for ourselves these ways and like the bright souls do we dabble with what we have at hand and make up something for our selves that might change the everythings that we were supposed to embrace, but in the end with a fresh perspective we change for ever after?

While at the seat of learning, do we say that it is enough just to be at the side of a bright soul, and rest in this alone and be safe in the tried and tested, or do we as in the story, wave our own wand and see perhaps if we will make up so many new brooms that only sweep away all into a new chaos, or perhaps as the sorcerer may have intended we learn from this, and in a way gather back the wood and straw and magic up a new gold that will assure the sorcerer that perhaps the time that was taken on the adjusting light of the apprentices was worth the effort. And, as their own bright soul may have done, they too will say that to spend some time passing on is worth the time as the brightness will continue to pass from one to another…

JR.

AND YOU MUST HAVE A GREAT POT TOO…

Just back from a clinic where a dear friend is getting over a case of a really bad flu, from the bed side I was shown a pic on the mobile phone ending with “… and as a chef you must have a really great pot considering the wonderful meal that was just eaten”.

Okay I lie, I make up the bit about the pot what was really said was that the chef had a really great stove, but the idea is the same…

The other day I was told that my camera was just an entry level Nikon, with a bit of a “shame you poor soul” attached, the wanker and that is what she is, was totally consumed by the stove makes the chef syndrome.

Okay, I lie again, it was just a joke about the chef, we are too insecure about our own sense of taste to blame the meal on a stove, we would rather be known to have forked out a pretty dollar for a chef cooked meal…

But come the humble photograph, and it all lies in the pure ability of the technicians at Nikon Inc, no mention of what it might take to work a situation, or be there at the right time, no we just have the Nikon guys to thank for this one.

Sorry all you Canon guys out there, not that I buy into the technician crap, it’s just that I grew up with Nikon and that is about it in the argument of which brand is better, if it be known and I am sure that it is in certain circles. I mostly us a M4 and that is just because I still have a thing for black and white film, and the technicians at both Nikon and Canon have moved on from such technology…

Oops, I lie again, I do have issues with the brands of cameras, Olympus, Pentax, Sony, and what ever bar the great three are all just crap, and they will always be crap until they get more like the big 3.

Which brings me to why there are only three greats, and this comes back to the pot principal, it is not about the camera, it is about the eye of the guy that holds the camera, and like the chef story the sooner the camera returns to its simple beginnings the sooner we will get to make great pics again, and sorry, but Canon, Nikon and the M series of cameras are to my mind the closest to this ideal.

 

JR.