dreams can be so telling of where the mind is really at. last night i was dreaming that i was with my family.
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we are traveling, somewhere foreign and unfamiliar. it feels like china, whatever that means. we are at an amusement park with wide walkways and only a few other patrons that always seem to hover near the foggy edges of my vision.
i am taking photos of my nieces. they’re flowing through a series of ridiculous poses unironically and with conviction, in the way that only young people who haven’t succumbed to the pragmatism of adulthood can.
and then, as i’m maneuvering my camera to keep up with their pace, the front of my body - where it meets the lens - begins to flex and shift. i fire off several exposures and then realize that my photos are warped and distorted in ways not normally possible without heavy editing. at first, i’m excited by this new perspective, giddy with the knowledge that i have in my hands a device that can create images like no other.
but then, the fear creeps in. i struggle desperately to realign my lens to its intended place in front of the sensor, but i am unable.
i bring my camera to my mother, and i show her how broken it has become. though i don’t say it out loud, in my heart i am hoping she will take pity on my and help my buy a replacement. but she can’t do that, no one can do it for me but myself.
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when i woke up this morning i thought long and hard about this dream. i carried it with me throughout the day, and even now, as i prepare to sleep once again, i can’t get it out of my mind.
i realize that the dram expresses one of my fears. i am afraid of the idea that one day i will arrive in a place where the opportunity exists to take a photo that surpasses all of my previous work, and that i won’t be prepared to capture it perfectly. i fear that my equipment will be insufficient, that i will forget a crucial element of the photography process and poorly frame or expose the image, and that in my fumbles the moment will pass and i will be left with an inferior result.
i am fairly certain this dream is at least in part the product of my deep focus over the past week on gear lust and my personal quest to uncover the underlying reason i become so fixated on the hunt for a new piece of equipment. and perhaps, it is part of the answer.