Ramble Project 1

 Florence Nightingale said "I think ones feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results"

With that in mind we set off to Woodstock NY to start our first "Ramble Project". For many, a road trip has a way of getting you out of your normal habit loop, but for us road trips are the norm. We take them often, and have been for a long time. Anything we do regularly enough manages to become somewhat habitual. How could we shake up our road trip so as not to be on auto pilot?

 Now anyone who knows me knows that I am an obsessive photographer. If you follow me on social media you are most definitely witness to the chronicling of my family and world around me through pictures. It is fitting that our first project would require a few shudder clicks.

The premise is simple:
We set a timer for every 20 minutes. Regardless of where we found ourselves we had to chose something to photograph. Now for those of you who are thinking why create a structured project  to break up the structure of habit I have this explanation: The random element of stopping every 20 minutes  would force us to look at things we might have never focused on. It was a way to freeze time, stop us in our paths and shake up our day. Before I go on I will Show you some of the photos of the day beginning with mine.

The interesting thing about my photos are they are all still life. and all have some architectural quality to them. This is in contrast to the photos I normally take which focus on people action and nature.

Below are Joes photos:

Also all still life, and the one photo with nature is a fake tree juxtaposed against a real one.

Emma's are below:

Of course our random time would put guitars in front of my music loving daughter, further proof that Emma is somehow in control of the universe (inside joke)
Last but not least Dylan's photos are below:

 

 

 

Clearly kids have a way of finding themselves in the moment regardless of how random it may be.

 

For me this project did something unexpected that made it bigger than four somewhat unique to me pictures. The serendipitous result of this experiment is it put me in the moment, but not how you would think. Normally I would have photographed much more of our day. I would have tried to get that great photo of Emma and Dylan laughing at lunch, or that quaint little side street with the light hitting it just right. The camera sat zippered into my bag waiting for the timer to ring. This kept me free to witness twenty minute chunks of time without it. Other than when the timer rang I didn't even think of it. On my normal days I do spend a good portion of time doing what I call freezing memories. Photography has always given me a way to honor the moment by recording it, but sometimes this habit has a way of putting a thin glass wall between me and the action. My experiment helped me accidentally break this habit and be more in the moment (in the 20 minute lapses between the timer ringing). When the timer did rang it forced me to look at the things I wouldn't normally record; those quiet ordered bits of still life that colorfully stand around begging no attention. The experiment was a success but not how I thought it would be

 and that makes me very happy.

Ramble on!