Review/existential crisis

This looks restful but it isn't. Getting from shutter to hammock, lying down, placing newspaper over face and limbs in position and stopping hammock swinging - all in 10 seconds - then getting out at the 11th second to check what's happened and have another go, constitutes serious exercise. Heading for Olympian.

There's also an existential crisis going on here. I don't mean angst - I completed angst with honours long ago and know that, apart from any arbitrary meaning I attach to what I do, my existence is futile  - what's going on here is the place of photography in my life. Everyone on blip is very kind but I am dissatisfied with my pictures. Almost all those I took at last Saturday's wedding and at Thursday's photoshoot were a big disappointment. Every day all but one of the pictures I take are worse than the one you see.

I know that if I did a course or two, read a book or seven and put in some serious practice I might learn how to get pictures in focus, take foregrounds without blown-out sky and even notice when I've left the camera on macro by mistake, but I don't know how much I want to. This photography stuff has already taken over my life.  Since January I've read half of two novels and have almost given up newspapers.

So today, warm, summery, I thought I'd relax in the hammock and see if I could remember how to read. I couldn't. All I could think about was how to take a picture of me in the hammock not reading.

And I couldn't even find a copy of Being and Nothingness to not-read.

HOWL