I met a pastor the other day. Reporter Tracie and I met him at the bar for lunch so she could interview him. He is Scottish. His name is Ewan. And he is most excellently awesome. The very first thing he said was this: “As you know, I’m from Scotland, a place that is not religious at all… and that’s a good thing” (not the sort of words you expect to hear from a pastor). Pastor Ewan went on to prove himself as one of the coolest people I have ever met… and that is a big statement coming from a person who doesn’t do religion, a person who doesn’t even believe in the man upstairs. If I did though, I would want to be in Ewan’s church… he plays Johnny Cash during his services.

But alas, I do not have such desires. However, when Tracie and Ewan started talking about church services and the things you learn in them, it made me realize maybe I do have a church… yoga.

See, I attend yoga services every Monday and Wednesday. I feel guilty when I miss one. It is an escape from my daily life, where I tune out the rest of the world and focus on what really matters - my body and mind. And not to mention, have a blast at the same time (we fall on our asses and crack jokes the whole time).

Tiff (my most excellent teacher) gives a little talk before each class, something a lot like what a pastor would talk about (sans Jesus). She tells a story from the day, something that has a neat little lesson to it, and we try to mirror that lesson in our practice. For example, she was once going through a very tough time. A friend of hers was dying of cancer. Her life was upside down. She gave a beautiful little sermon that basically concluded that you can still stand, even when you’re upside down. And not suprisingly, in our practice we focused on being upside-down (headstands and such). I too was going through a tough time and that class was like a revelation for me.

Yoga is hard. I often find myself not wanting to go for this reason. I am too tired one day and don’t want to do it. Or I am in a really bad mood. It is these days that I know I need the yoga the most. And even though I might hate it the first 20 minutes, before too long, I will be so glad I came. And everything will turn around.

You get high. You find bliss (for me, it comes most often in the form of pigeon pose). Once you finish and lie down in corpse pose, your body tingles. The rest of the world disappears. I often fall asleep during these last few moments of class and have seriously deep dreams. Even when you don’t fall asleep, you often think maybe you did because your mind is so far gone. You sit up, and your posture is perfect. You become more aware, not just of your surroundings, but also of yourself. Everything on your mind, all the shit that plagued your brain the whole day, and even through most of class, is gone. Everything has been wiped clean. Even when the high wears off, nothing bothers you like it did before… surprisingly, not even when it’s provoked. You find peace.

You can do some pretty strange things in yoga… things you never thought your body was capable of doing. I’m talking no-handed headstands, and one-handed arm balances with both legs in one direction. It is nuts. I still only fall within the moderate zone, and am not quite capable of doing such things (things like this are a ways beyond my reach), but I’m getting close by being able to do stuff like this and absolutely anything in a full lotus (like this). Not gonna lie, it’s pretty awesome. I feel empowered.

My roommate is out of town. Her daughter is staying with a friend. I have the whole house to myself… and of course, our many animals. This includes the dog.

Dog has some issues with mistaking carpet for grass. It’s not too bad anymore, but we still keep her in the kennel at night for this reason. Last night, at bedtime, I put her in it. Not even an hour later, and when I am fast asleep, I am awoken by her barking. I let her outside. She doesn’t do anything. I put her on her leash and attach the leash to the kitchen table. This way, she’s not stuck in that little kennel, and from the kitchen table, her leash reaches her big cozy bed, her food and water, and fresh air. And not to mention, if she did go to the bathroom, it is on hard floor rather than carpet. I go back to bed.

I wake up early this morning so that I can take her for a walk up the mountain in the backyard. Good thing I got up early, because when I find myself entering the kitchen, I am greeted with not one, not two, but three piles diarrhea dog poo on the kitchen floor… and various streaks of it all over that she had obviously walked through. But calling it poo is a severe understatement. There is a bit of cuteness attached to the word ‘poo’ but there was nothing cute about this. There is no other way to describe the stuff on that kitchen floor other than S-H-I-T… in liquid form. Lovely way to start the morning, don’t you think? Who knows when she did her business - one pile had a hard crust forming while another was as soft as if it had just come out. The streaks were set in stone.

I spent the better part of half an hour trying to get that “poo” off the floor. I let her outside and she faked a pee (she does this, fakes it like a woman might orgasms). I let her out a few minutes later and she goes again (possibly real this time, possibly fake). Then she wants to go out again and she squats like she’s going to poo… but instead, more diarrhea drips out. I felt bad because she was obviously very uncomfortable, but words can not express how happy I was that the dog was doing that outside this time. I shower her with “good girl!”s and try to reiterate the “inside bad, outside good” idea. I was so proud of her… for about 30 seconds.

In her excitement, she runs around, back to her pile (or puddle rather) of poo and begins to lap it up. I scream. She comes away immediately, and I am mortified and will not let her near my face. Not even a minute later, she goes back and does it again, but this time my yelling didn’t stop her. She only did it for a second or two, but that was a second or two too long. She comes to my feet and smiles up at me. Her breath stinks like her butt and my cheeks twinge with that near-vomiting feeling. I give her a pat anyway and we go inside.

So there you have it, a very real (and very literal) example of the phrase “eating shit for breakfast.” Oh boy, it’s going to be a fun week.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about timing. We all fall victim to bad timing every now and again… but when you think about it, everything in life, good or bad, is all about timing. Sometimes though, it seems like the timing couldn’t get any worse.

I guess it all started for me when I heard about the 11-year-old boy who was killed by a bear this weekend. The first death by a bear in recorded Utah history and it’s an 11-year-old boy. That poor family had horrible timing. There was a bear attack at their campsite that very morning… but they never knew it because they showed up right after the rangers had left and right before they were coming back. And that little boy was dragged away and killed in that very time-frame. Had they come just a few hours earlier, or a few hours later, that little boy would still be alive.

About two weeks ago, I took a photo of a woman for our weekly profile of an interesting Park City resident. But two days after it ran in the paper, her husband committed suicide. Not the sort of time you want to be in the public spotlight.

Luckily, for most of us, things aren’t so tragic. But we do often find ourselves in that “when it rains, it pours” situation. Just when things couldn’t get any worse, they do. And each new instance of crap comes with the worst possible timing. It will eventually turn around, but that won’t stop occasional instances of bad timing from still occurring. Maybe it’s as simple as getting to the grocery store the day after a regularly-expensive item goes off sale. Or maybe PMS strikes you at the one time you so desperately need to be clear-headed, but can’t because your hormones have made you an emotional basketcase (and it feels like your whole life could change because of this once instance of PMS at the most inappropriate moment). Or maybe your dream job opens up (one you would ditch everything in a heartbeat to go for), but you know that at this point in your life, you can’t possibly leave your current job or life (even though you know the opportunity may never come again). Or maybe bad timing has caused the demise of a perfect relationship (while also stopping potentially great ones from ever starting). Why is it that bad timing seems to be the story of my life right now?

I do know though that as much bad timing as there is in the world, there is an equal amount of perfect timing. The example currently standing out to me is what happened earlier today when, just in the nick of time, just before its sent to the printers, I tell my editor what a load of crap that letter to the editor was, and she pulls it, saving my coworker’s reputation in this town. Or when you realize someone is trouble and you get away before they cause any more. Or when you’re pissed off at the world, need to get away, and the minute you do, something opens your eyes and brings you back to the true beauty of the world. Or that off-duty officer at the Trolley Square shootings (perfect timing for his dinner… perfect).

But yeah, bad timing - it’s a bitch.

Yesterday, a letter was sent to the editor accusing our photographer Scott of staging photos. This is completely false. Not only do I know that he would not do such a thing, but I was right there with him when this so-called staging took place. When we shot the “junior golf crap” together last week, I was the golf cart driver, and Scott took photos as I zoomed around. Once stopped, I took a few as well. As we approached our first batch of golf students, we stopped about 80 feet away while Scott took a cute photo of two young boys sitting atop their parked golf cart. This is the primary reason for the letter. Because the golf course would never allow children to ride atop golf carts, them sitting up there must certainly have been the result of Scott telling them to do so. Not surprisingly, it was the director of the golf course who sent this letter. But maybe Mr. Director should talk to his coaches before making such accusations. Thing is, not only were those kids sitting on top of the parked golf cart, but they stayed on it when the cart was being driven. Also indicted in the letter was a photo of mine (though my name was never mentioned in this brutal email) of two boys behind the wheel of a golf cart. Obviously, the golf course would never allow young kids to drive, so that photo must have been staged as well. But here’s the thing, I didn’t take a picture of kids driving a golf cart. I took a picture of kids making noises like “vroom, vroom” as they jerk around the steering wheel. They are kids. They do this. Their legs do not reach the pedals. But get this, those kids did accidentally hit the brake off and ran over their teacher’s foot.

However, this is only background information. The bigger issue at hand is something else. Scott found out about this letter when a printed copy was left on his desk with a note that said “SCOTT, NOT GOOD” on it from the editor. Scott went and explained the situation. He did nothing wrong, and didn’t worry too much about it. When he showed me the email, I laughed at how ridiculous this guy was and made a point to mention to our editor that I was right there with Scott and that the email is indeed a load of crap. I got busy with shoots yesterday and forgot. Then again this morning, I meant to, but again forgot. We never thought the letter would actually run, so it didn’t seem a life-or-death situation. I finally remembered and said one simple little sentence to my editor: “Just so you know, that email is a load of horseshit.” And she runs, not walks, back to her office, yelling at someone to pull the letter, and gets on the phone to call Mr. Director and “give him hell.” But had I not said that one little sentence, it seems that letter would have run. And poor Scott would have had his name demolished by his own paper for something he never did. He explained everything, and it is unfair that his voice was ignored, yet one little sentence by me changes everything. I don’t know why my voice is taken as the truth, yet his is not. Sadly, I know he has always felt like I am the favorite child… and when stuff like this happens, I can’t blame him.

Lack of posting lately has been due to busy work and personal life, but also because my internet time has been devoted strictly to archiving my photos online. I was using a place called Fotki, but only for the fact that you can code it to look like your own website. This requires too much CSS for my taste and is a pain in the arse to change. I got sick of it and decided to see what all the Flickr hoopla was about. I may not be able to blend it with my site, but I do understand why people love it so. My life feels so much more organized now!

I’m not sure why, but I have always resized my photos for the internet in Photoshop and saved them as separate files. For this reason, all my photos on the internet are useless to me later should I lose original files. And not to mention, my hard drive is chocked full of these useless 600-pixel pictures. So this past week I have been trying to dig up old files, the original ones, and it has been a bit of a chore. I’ve dug through piles of CDs and even busted out my old desktop PC (which lived in my car for the better part of a year and didn’t work the last time I tried to turn it on). I’m glad it worked this time though because so many important files lie within that piece of crap. I’ve uploaded only full-size photos to Flickr and feel much safer because of it. Personal or work, it is all on there in its full-size glory… so hopefully when this Powerbook goes (which I’m sure won’t be too far away), all will not be lost. Plus, full-size images scaled down appear sharper (though sometimes too sharp), and Flickr seems to hold my blacks better than Fotki and even my own webserver.

So without further ado, let me introduce you to my Flickr page.

And now that that’s out of the way, on with the show!

A minute ago, I got up to take my clothes out of the dryer and wash my face, brush my teeth, etc. And something just kind of struck me as I was drying my face on a towel. I really like my life. It’s nothing spectacular, but it is fairly amazing.

What did I do today? I drove to work. It’s a production day so I shot one thing and then sat around doing busy work. Then I went to Subway but the line was too long so I got a burrito at the Mexican place across the way instead. I ate it in the conference room. I came home after work and took a big nap. I putzed on the internet when I woke up. And finally, I washed my face and had this simple revelation: As horrifying boring as my life can be sometimes, I love it.

Now don’t get me wrong, if every day was like this I might get a bit more down on myself, but most days are much more interesting. Every day I’m somewhere new, talking to new people, having new conversations. Perhaps I’m so content with my life because, as a photographer, I don’t just live my own little life, but a little bit of everyone else’s. I don’t need a lot of friends, a lot of money, or a lot of excitement. I have variety. And as long as I am constantly learning, I can’t really ask for anything more in my life.

When I was younger, even just a few years back, I never imagined myself where I am right now. I was going to live in China, travel the world, and once I became a photographer, I wanted to work my way up to a big-city paper. We all go through phases where we want these sorts of things, and I feel like a lot of people get down on themselves when their life takes a different path. But maybe, if you’re like me, you come to a point where you realize you don’t even want that path anymore. You’re happy where you are.

Maybe my younger self would be disappointed, but I don’t have any aching desire to travel the world, to work at a big-city paper again, or even to marry rich. I got my travel itch out as a teen when I traveled the world every year, and now I feel there’s so much to do and see right here in America’s backyard that I’d rather take road trips on those glorious two-lane highways. Of course, I am always on a quest to see new things so I would gladly accept any opportunity to travel abroad should one present itself, I just don’t mind if it doesn’t. And as great as it is working at a big-city paper and shooting incredible assignments, I’m just not happy in the city. Once I headed west and left Minneapolis behind, everything changed. I credit my move to Jackson for altering my view of what makes a person successful. It’s pretty cliche, but I think I found myself living in that little mountain town. Clarity overwhelmed me. Whereas work was always my top priority before, I discovered my top priority, as it should be, was myself. And this has been one my proudest achievements in life thus far.

I may have only worked yesterday and Wednesday this past week, but between those two days and my long weekend in Jackson, a plentiful week in photos abounds. And we’re off!

This past weekend (well, weekend and a few extra days rather) I returned to Jackson Hole. And sometimes I really wonder why I ever left. I know I had to do what I had to do, but man, I really love Wyoming (and a certain person there). Don’t get me wrong, I like Utah, but it’s not the same. In Jackson, you’re so cut off from the rest of the world. You’re hours and hours and mountain ranges and mountain ranges away from everything. Park City may be quite comparable to Jackson, but with Salt Lake just a stone’s throw away, it’s hard to feel cut off from the world. And though this close proximity to Salt Lake sometimes has its benefits, I miss that feeling of really being in the middle of nowhere. I don’t get that here. I think I really just need to get into the Uintas more often. It’s a beautiful thing when you can get out of town and away from all the people.

It’s for this reason that I quite enjoy long drives (as long as I’m on two-lane U.S. and state highways rather than the interstate). You can go for miles and miles without seeing a single soul. And in this part of the country, the scenery alone is enough to keep you company. There are no big ugly billboards or signs. All there is is the open road, a beautiful backdrop, and a car stereo. I’ve driven all over the country, and even the most boring drives have their beauty… especially when you’re seeing things for the first time. There’s always something about that first sight. I can’t even begin to describe the way the Tetons first appeared to me as I came out of a snowstorm down Togwotee Pass and into a summer sunset. Or the way the mountains in Pennsylvania formed out of farmland on my way from Minnesota to Maryland. Or how the horrifyingly boring state of South Dakota suddenly turns into a mountain paradise once you hit the Black Hills… and if you continue west, goes straight back to boring through most of Wyoming. On long drives, you see the subtle changes in the land that produce those drastic changes. And on those long drives, I just sit and think (and honestly, a lot of the time I don’t even do that). Everything is so simple when you’re driving those deserted highways. You think about things like how many trees there must be in the world. I wonder if anyone could answer that.

Anyway, I spent my long weekend hotspringing, climbing, campfiring, listening to the best damn bluegrass in Jackson, and sleeping in the bed of a pick-up truck, among other things. Photos will be included in this week’s edition of the week in photos.

Of course, I was quite sad to leave Jackson again, but it is nice to be home. Although the truck bed was actually quite comfortable, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find heaven on Earth sleeping in my own bed again last night. And as much as I’d like to stay on vacation and not work, it’s not too bad being back in the swing of things.

And get this, Sarah Jr. clocked in at over 54 MPG on the way home yesterday. I likely caught a tailwind south, but who cares! 54 MPG! In the 154 miles between Alpine Junction and Evanston, Wyoming, I only used 2.83 gallons of gas. Stunned? Yeah, me too. She’s amazing. Strangers even approached me this weekend to ask me about her. No one has ever seen or heard of her, but everyone loves her. I’m pretty sure I sold a mother on buying one for her son. And even a 6′5 guy loved her as he was stunned that he had more than enough leg room in the backseat. She is a hit, what can I say.

I got my new car on Tuesday… but let me be clear, I got my brand new car on Tuesday. And this car is so much like me, I have decided the only thing I could possibly call it is Sarah Jr. She is the automobile equivalent of me. She’s petite. It doesn’t cost a lot to keep her happy. She’s not the fastest kid on the block, won’t win any races, but is a worthy competitor. She even has the cutest little rear-end! The resemblance is uncanny, don’t you think? The only thing she’s missing is a rack. Oh man, I need to shut up.

Meet Sarah Jr., my brand new 2007 Nissan. It’s a Versa. I’d never heard of it either. My stepdad and I were having an awful time car shopping the other day and stumbled upon her. My stepdad was kind enough to drive out here to make sure I didn’t get taken advantage of. Without him, I’m sure I would have. We cruised the used cars at the dealers down on State Street and weren’t finding anything… anything except bloodthirsty car salesmen who would not detach themselves from your hip, ever. My stepdad called them woodticks, and started introducing himself to each new one as Woody. His name is Bob. Anyway, as the hours wore on, I started thinking we’d never find me a car. And I wasn’t going to settle for something I wasn’t excited about. If I’m going to spend over half my yearly income on a car, it had better be something I like. But I just wasn’t liking anything. Some were alright, but nothing was just right… no perfect fit. Either they were too heavy, too prehistoric (no power windows, no deal), too ugly, or too expensive. As the feeling of hopelessness started sinking in, we pulled into the Nissan dealer… and the clouds above opened up as we caught sight of Sarah Jr. It was love at first sight. And once we got to know her, she was the perfect fit. Long story short, car salesman approached us, car salesman was not a woodtick, car salesman got a car sold.

And get this, Sarah Jr. gets 35 MPG. And Sarah Sr. got a .7% interest rate. That’s right, not 7, but .7… as in less than 1%. Take that Wells Fargo!

If it isn’t obvious by now, I love my new car. I love driving it and I love looking at it. I love opening the hatchback. And using my keyless remote. I love parking it away from everyone else so she doesn’t get dinged. I love keeping her clean. She is my baby. And everyone I have introduced her to says the same thing: we are a perfect match. You just look at her and everything about her screams Sarah. She’s not my dream car, but she’ll do the job just fine. What she lacks in some departments, she makes up for in others. And at this point in my life, she’s really all I need.

And now we’re outta here. We’re taking a long weekend up in the Tetons. Be back sometime next week.

As per usual, photos I don’t completely hate from the past week.

Thanks to my pal Carolyn (who first introduced me to life listdom), I now have a book of my list, each page dedicated to a different goal (and the drawings are hilarious). Only 40 pages are filled, but there’s plenty room for more.

PS: I hope to check off a few this weekend

The bear is back. Today is garbage day in my neck of the woods and he hit two garbage cans this morning. When I found out, I was mortified because I knew today was the day I’d see it, but also the day the bear would be shot. I did not want my first bear sighting to be of it dying. Luckily, killing it is only a last resort, and our neighborhood bear hasn’t used up all his chances yet. He would simply be tranquilized and relocated.

After the first sightings, reporter and I met up with the Division of Wildlife Resources to go bear hunting. I was pretty excited, but it ended up being not very exciting. We simply sat on a dirt road waiting for a phone call that never came. It was terribly hot out, and the bear had already pigged out on two garbage cans. He had likely fallen into a food coma in the forest. We didn’t know where he was and wouldn’t until that phone rang. But it never did.

All was not lost though. Besides learning oodles upon oodles of information about the animal, I got to hang out the DWR’s own bloodhound attack dog, Curly. Ain’t he precious?

The other day, when I was hanging out with Gene (that WWII vet pictured in the previous post), he showed me an old camera from the 50s. We took it out of its case to look at it, but it took us at least 20 minutes to get it back in… not because we were so intrigued by it, but because putting it back in the case seemed harder than a Rubik’s cube at the time. Because of this, he called us “the moron club.” And how fitting it was, especially for me, a so-called photographer… who couldn’t get a camera back in its case.

It got me thinking about all the times that I have been a photo idiot, and there have been quite a few. In my defense, all the embarrassing stories I’m about to tell all occurred within my first seven months as a photographer at my school paper. I would like to think I’ve come a long way. But before I go any further and lose the respect of any fellow photographers reading this, I would like to say that we all learn by trial and error. And screwing up, embarrassing yourself, and being an idiot are surefire ways to learn how to do things right.

And so, without further ado, let the embarrassment begin.

When I was first hired at my school paper, I was hired as a 10-hours-per-week intern. The girl who hired me gave me a quick run-down with the camera gear on my first day, but I must not have been paying much attention (or was distracted by all the huge lenses). When I got home, I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to put the damn lens on the camera. I had to dig through the manual to find out. Apparently, putting the two little red dots together never struck me as something I should try. But in my defense, though I did have picture-taking experience before this with newspapers and magazines, I had always used cameras that came with the lenses attached.

Not long after came the Fourth of July incident, when I was told I would need a tripod to shoot the fireworks. I grabbed what I thought was a tripod, but a tripod it was not. I struggled for a very long time in a crowd of people starting oddly at me to balance a camera on top of a light stand. Oh man. In my defense, I was still the intern.

The next idiotic realization came a few months later when I figured out what that little meter inside the camera was. This was a god-send, as before this I had to guess my exposure, chimp, and adjust accordingly. It worked just fine for me, but life was much better once we got that one figured out.

And last but not least, I may have been an idiot photographer, but I was a good one, and my work flew me to Nashville a few months later for a college media convention. The part I was most excited for (aside from four days in Nashville, all expenses paid) was that there was going to be an on-site photo competition. There was a catch though… no digital allowed. I was a little nervous, but by this time I had the meter thing figured out so I wasn’t too worried. Around 50 photographers had 24 hours to take two rolls of film with the theme “Nashville blues”… what ever that meant to you. Once the competition was under way, I had to call my boss because I had a question I couldn’t seem to find the answer to. “Tom, how do you change the white balance on this camera?” He started laughing hysterically, because obviously, there is no white balance on film. But in my defense, I’ve never had a photography class, so how the hell was I supposed to know? Sure, I shot film growing up and for my high school yearbook, but those cameras were always set on auto mode and we got them developed at Walgreen’s. After that phone call, I’m pretty sure everyone back at work was wondering if they really should have sent me, the so-called photographer, all the way to Nashville. But I ended up proving myself and winning that whole competition anyway… so there! (as if that validates anything)

Sick of all my text? Here are some photos from this past week. I may not have gotten the bear, but I did get a few I like.