The Sky Really Has No Limit

Applying the Rule of Thirds. Seasoned lensmen will say never have the horizon centered in the frame. Always have a subject like a car of center with space "to move into". The portrait must be off center for the eyes to have space "to look into". Many do not apply the rules. Many bend them. Some push them to the limits. I simply shoot as I see it most times. 

I sat for about fifteen minutes looking at this spectacle through the viewfinder. I pointed the camera towards the ground placing to the horizon in the top third. Click click. 

From the same spot I pointed the lens skyward and pressed the shutter button. My initial reaction was "Mmm, it's ok". Maybe not to shabby. I got home and downloaded the pictures and than realized what I had accomplished in about thirty minutes on the beach. For me the picture was perfect. It needed no post editing and was just as I wanted it. 

What really "spoke" to me was the natural "blue vignette" in the sky above our beloved mountain. It seemed as if there was no end to this amazing blue sky. 

The saying goes "The Sky's the Limit" when one one achieves some sort milestone or success. Yet the "sky" is limitless and unending. 


Over the past few weeks I have been beating myself over the head trying to find reasons why things are just not working. The lights went on after "speaking" to some really talented and gifted, good people. This brought about a change in perspective. My dad always used to say, if you look at the ground when you walk you may just walk into a tree. Look up. See the sky above. Get direction. Change the way you do things. Get a different perspective. There is a brilliant blue sky above you filled with endless potential. 


  

What Does One Do To Get Noticed.

I once had a girlfriend. I was in high school and my sense of humour was in its development stages.  Anyway, she comes to school one day and I notice she had extracted all he front teeth. Problem was they were a beautiful set of teeth that did not need extracting. Well, at least I thought so. My comment at the time was the end to our little relationship. It went something like “damn, what some people do to attract attention”.

So here I am. Yes. Thats me. Yes, I know the picture's back to front.

 I’m all over the place. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, the works. My laptop even has a locater thingy that pops up ever so now and again. I’ve become half paranoid with the idea that aliens might be spying on me as I have my toast and coffee. I am NETWORKED. Well at least I think I am. I have “friends” or connections in all sorts of industries from media to social networking to motivational speakers the world over. Yet I feel like that skeleton sitting on the bench waiting for the world to change. Being on those networks and being connected has not meant anything to me at all. I am wracking my brain trying to find out what more I need to do attract attention. The “racist rant” thing seems to work quite well. That is simply not my style. Besides, it will be like doing the loaded gun Russian roulette exercise.  A nude selfie in the mirror on Facebook or Instagram will simply NOT have the desired effect. Seriously. Sending your Curriculum Vitae via email is like dropping a rock down one a deserted mine shaft and waiting for the splash. Phone calls are just never returned and the “we’ll call you” brigade rules. All the promises made makes Jacob Zuma look like a habitual deliverer. Therefore, what is it. What does one have to do to get the desired responses like a personalised mail or a call to say thanks but no thanks.

According to LinkedIn my profile is pretty damn good. It’s “all star”.  The blue circle indicates there is not much more I need to do to get right up there as far as I need to be to “attract attention”. I know there has been talk of content becoming too “facebookish”. I agree. After all, it’s a platform for professional discourse and interaction. Reality is I have had no interaction or constructive discourse, professional or otherwise. Maybe it’s just me. Wrong place. Wrong time. My age, looks, not professional enough. Who knows.

Personally, I think we, this human race, has become to socially networked. We’ve forgotten how to be human. Our lives have become meaningless without our smart phones and tech stuff. Yes, we need to keep up. We need to stay with the pace of change. Yet we also need to remain human. Human interaction has become a luxury. We don’t even want to shake hands any more.   

Now. Here is the challenge. If you have made your million by been profiled here or anywhere else, tell me. If, you are like that skeleton and me, still waiting, tell me. Maybe we can work this thing out together. Either way. I would love to network. Socially that is. I know we may never meet face to face.  

Show Compassion

I watched a YouTube video earlier today honouring the forty-nine victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre. One cannot but be moved as each one’s story is told in about thirty seconds. Earlier this week social media came alive with the news of the attack at the Attaturk Airport in Istanbul. Thirty-six more victims at the hands of someone who had a difference in belief and opinion. Somehow, somewhere someone was able to convince these young men to take up arms, strap high explosives to their bodies and enter a public space and wreak as much havoc as possible. They would pay the highest price a human can pay simply because they needed to make point. What that point is we may never know. Analyst will speculate for days and weeks. We will never know. They died making their point.  Along with that, they caused untold pain and misery to the families of the thirty six victims and to the two hundred odd people left injured. The kid that walked into the Pulse nightclub knew what he was doing. Someone somewhere had managed to get into his head and convince him being gay is wrong. He was married. He had a family. Yet to him, the only way he could get his point across was to buy a gun and walk into a crowded place and “make his point”. We will never really know what motivated him. Analyst will speculate for days. The digging up of the dirt will go on for as long as is necessary. Yet the pain and the agony he wreaked will live on forever. Forty-nine families will live with the pain of having lost loved ones.

Dirt collection day in our “neck of the woods” happens on Tuesdays. I often lay in bed at about five in the morning listening to the sound of the trollies been pushed down the road. At times, they irritate the living daylights out of me. The other morning I watched an oldish looking lady through my cosy little office window. I am not sure why, yet I went outside and my first in inclination was to shout at her and vent my irritation. Instead, I went out and said “more antie”. She looked at me with utter disbelief. Maybe she was expecting me to breath the wrath of frustration down on her.  The little boy with her screamed with wild excitement when he saw my tree climbing cat high in the tree above him. “Mamma kyk, die kat is innie boem”. Our exchange was brief. Why was she doing this. What was she looking for. What do they get for what they find. She found a single cold drink tin. She gets forty cents a kilo for a can. We all know what that can weighs. Yet she has to dig through what we discard in order to feed the five year old. She sleeps under the bridge of the very busy N7 highway that passes nearby.

Art Matthews penned the words Peace, Love More Tolerance. While he had his moment with our national anthem, I will always remember him for that song and the video they made with it. Our beloved Madiba even makes a little cameo appearance.  My point is this. It is so much easier to break something than to put it back together. The glass that is dropped on the floor, shatters into a million slivers.  It can’t be glued back together. Instead, the shards are swept up and binned. Relationships torn apart through infidelity, mistrust or some or other act of betrayal are often not restorable. The fact is, there are some things that simply cannot be fixed. That’s just life. We can, however, show compassion, a little understanding. We can even take a split second to look beyond the obvious. The song once said every face tells a story. Consider the bin picker that irritates us. The one who comes begging at the gate. The guy driving in that flashy sports car living in the house on the hill.  We all carry a story within us. A little compassion, a little understanding, a silent thought before that racist word is uttered or typed, will go a long way to change our world. I know all this may sound horribly simplistic. Yet that’s precisely it. It’s much simpler than we will ever know.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq6xRZlCSoM