Later that day, I decided that it was time to fire up the grill and have a good ‘ol summer barbecue with the family.  Especially after spending a good portion of our summer so far cooped up in the house under quarantine so as not to infect the world with whooping cough.  So as I normally do, I made the call to the kindling brigade, my kids, who sprang into action gathering up twigs, sticks, pine needles and the like to help get the fire started.  Only this time the task seemed to have been completed much quicker than normal.

I went outside to find next to the barbecue a large pile of fine twigged branches.  On asking where they found these and my oldest son said from the dead birch tree.  He had taken a large stick and trashed some of the lower branches of one of the White Birch trees in our backyard.  I showed my displeasure with that and reminded him of the lecture that we had just attended.  He looked at me and said, “Well, this tree is dead, it has already given us all the blessings it can from its oxygen and shade, and so this is its last blessing, its wood, which will help nourish us by cooking our food on the flames it will produce.”  His statement floored me.

We used to have three of these beautiful trees in our yard.  Two winters ago, during a very strong storm, one was toppled over, leaving its two companions to live on.  Then some time last year the second tree lost its leaves and never grew new ones.  It still stands although just as a skeleton of its former self.

Upon hearing my son’s comment, I really started to ponder about the benefits we get from these delicate and lovely trees.  So I pulled out the camera, as I have done numerous times before trying to capture the essence of these stark white trunks against the dark green leaves in summer or vibrant yellows in autumn and started to photograph them again.  Only this time there was a deep connection with them.  They were more than just trees.  They were companions, helpers in my journey to my own end.

What started out as an intention for a couple of snapshots turned into something much more profound for me. I moved from photographing the detail of the leaves and trunk to how these trees bask in the sun, taking in the glorious light and making their own food from it. What brought this lovely tree to its demise will be a mystery forever I suppose and the question that begets me is will the last standing tree suffer the same fate as its sisters?

Standing as a mere skeleton now, the dead birch has but a few branches left, luckily out of the reach of my over ambitious son in search of kindling. But nonetheless, its branches and twigs are much appreciated as they did most certainly kindle the fire that cooked our meal that evening. As I snapped the dried branches and piled them into the barbecue, I never once realized the blessing we have in the left over wood from dead trees. It just never seemed to register. We don’t see that wood as a tree anymore, but it was a tree.

Simple twigs and sticks, not much at all to look at or to even ponder about, but it is from those simple little things that great results emerge.  A small spark, a flame, and the next thing you know you have a roaring blaze that brings warmth and the energy to cook our own food.  For tens of years, that tree stood absorbing the energy from the sun, making its own sugar as food through photosynthesis allowing itself to grow.  Each year adding more girth to its trunk and branches, producing shade giving leaves and then shedding them to the ground where they became the mulch and soil that the tree itself needed to remain firm and steadfast in the ground.  A cycle that continued until The Sustainer decided that it was time for this tree to stop, and the cycle was broken.  However the benefits continue.  For now, locked in its wood, the accumulated years of energy lies dormant waiting for that small spark to ignite the wood and release it for one more final blessing.

The coals that evening were particularly mild.  Hot enough to cook on, but with no scorching and very few flares that tend to char the food.  The coals themselves originating from hardwood trees themselves also finally gave their last blessing as well.  The entire evening was riddled with final blessings right and left.  For not only did these trees give us what they could in cooking our food, so too did the chickens whose meat we were about to cook, and the grains of Bulghur wheat, tomatoes and onions that were stewing on the stove, all giving us their last blessing as well.

I think we fail to realize that we are the end users of everything on this planet, from the air we breath, to the water we drink to the food we consume, to all the other natural resources that we use for our survival, comfort and gain.  How should we feel as the benefactors of all these blessings?  Do we feel gratitude?  Do we feel a sense of shame in front of The Bestower who gives us these blessings and we do nothing in return, not even giving thanks?  Do we feel any responsibility at all in returning the good we have received by doing good to others and to our world?  I shudder when I think of all the blessings I have in my life, for my benefit, for my comfort and gain, and I go heedless in life not realizing that all I do is take and give nothing in return.

The meal that night was fantastic.  We all ate to our fill and to our satisfaction, and in some part wishing that we still had more for later.  The benefit from that meal has already passed through our bodies, but what we learned from it, what we can give back because of it can go on for a very long time.  I am going to be more cognizant of the blessings I have and will make more of an effort to give back to the world at least some portion of the good that I have taken from it.  I invite all of you to do the same, so that in times to come, others might say of us what we can say now of the blessings we have.

Peace.

©2010 Organic Light Pan. All Rights Reserved.

This evening we went out to sight the new moon for the Islamic month of Sha’baan. It is the 8th month in the Islamic year and it is a crucial moon to see as it helps mark the beginning of Ramadan, the 9th month and the month of fasting. I saw it first among my family this evening as the kids were playing around. When I called out ‘There it is!’ of course they all ran to me and started probing me so they could see it. One after another, like dominoes, the lovely sound of “Ahhh, I see it I see it!” All but one. My youngest daughter, only 4 years old, and so determined to see the moon cries out – “I can’t See it!” “Where is it?!” After about 2o minutes of pointing to it, and helping her find landmarks where she could cast off into the sky to see it, we still were no better off.

I told her to relax, it will get brighter and you will see it. As we sat there, she suddenly asked, “what’s that black thing up there?” She had noticed a jet liner coming into the Bay Area to probably land at the San Francisco International airport. It was flying directly at the moon. I told her to, “keep watching the plane, and it will fly right next to the moon and when I tell you, look real hard.” Suddenly I say – “Now!” “I see it, I see it!” she yells out in glee.

It is the strangest thing, seeing the new moon. It brings great joy to my heart, and to everyone who has ever come out with me and saw it. One moment you are looking at blank sky and then the next, there it is, as plain as day itself. Its as if it suddenly comes into existence from nowhere, its born into the world – somehow almost miraculously.

Next month, for the month of Ramadan, we are expecting the moon to be seen on the evening of August 11th. Go out an experience a miracle. Your heart will thank you for it.

Peace.

©2010 Organic Light Pan. All Rights Reserved.

Peace

©2010 Organic Light Pan. All Rights Reserved.

Choices

The photograph, Choices, which was the subject of the last journal entry, The Decisions We Make, was selected as Editor’s Choice this week at the Nature Photographers.net website in the Earth, Sea and Sky category.  You can visit Nature Photographers.Net to see it there and to also view some of the best nature photography found anywhere in the world.

©2010 Organic Light Pan. All Rights Reserved.

In my senior year in college I was finishing up all of my general education classes, classes that would have normally been taken in the first couple of years.  I was more interested in math and science so I delayed my general ed classes.  One of the more interesting and challenging classes I attended was Philosophy 101.  It was in this class that we were introduced to deductive logic, reasoning and how to argue and prove a line of thinking.

We had a term paper due at the end of the semester, one of our choosing, with professor approval of course (so much for choice).  I was clueless as to what I would write about and try to prove.  Then one day in class the professor spoke on the topic of free will.  She mentioned that past philosophers argued and proved that humans have free will.  This rubbed me the wrong way, and of course I did not agree.  I approached her after class and debated with her that as humans we do not have free will and that I would like to tackle this topic as the subject of my term paper.  At first she was very reluctant to allow me  to work on this topic, insisting that there was no way I could disprove free will.  After a little cajoling she allowed me to write on that topic, but gave me a caveat that I would not  be successful.  Well, throwing the gauntlet down at my feet only kindled my fervor and I set out on my task.

If you are interested in reading that short paper, I think I could find it stashed away in my notes somewhere.  But the basic premise of my argument was that rather than free will, which implies the ability to do as one wishes, what we truly have is merely the freedom of choice.  We can choose whatever we wish freely, from our actions, decisions, preferences and so on.  However, the outcomes of our choices are not in our control, nor do we have any foreknowledge of what the outcomes of our choices will be.  Of course this premise is not as attractive as that of a free will, where we have the freedom to choose, but also, in addition to that, we would know and have control over the outcome of our choices.  My argument did not find favor with my professor and she had notes in the margins arguing almost every statement I made.

Then I introduced the concept of a being that would have complete and total free will and described how such an entity would literally have control over everything and that there could only be one such entity for otherwise the universe as we know it would fall into complete chaos as the multiple entities would be battling for superiority – willing this and that in to being over each other.  I named this entity, for lack of any better term God.  At this point, her comments seemed to dwindle and then vanish from the page.  My final conclusion was that if we truly had free will there would be nothing to stop us for vying for control and becoming gods ourselves.  And since this has never happened and probably never will, free will for us mere humans is a fallacy.

Which brings me to the reason I post this story today.  Choices.  Four years ago I photographed that stoic valley oak in the local hills surrounding the San Jose, CA area.  It was nice but it never seemed to call out to me to do anything with it.  So I decided to just file it away.  Two weeks ago a client requests an image that can portray informed decision making for a website landing page.  Well this photo comes to mind.

At about the same time, I become ill along with all of my four children.  A terrible hacking cough plagued us, with a very distinct Whooping gasp for air at the end of the paroxysms.  What was going on?  We visit the doctor.  To our astonishment we have contracted Pertussis – yeah whooping cough!  But wait, I was vaccinated… you mean the vaccine does not confer life long immunity?  Well it would have been nice to be told that as an adult.  What!  You mean its only 70% to 97% effective in children?  Well so much for vaccines.  Okay, its not a life threatening illness since we are all above the age of 2 years, but 100 days of coughing is not an attractive proposition, and there is nothing, I mean nothing, to lessen the severity of the cough.  We just have to let it run its course.  Do nothing and after 21 days from onset and we are no longer contagious.  Take a course of antibiotics and the contagious period is reduced to 5 days.

More decisions.  Well I am on quarantine for two more days, my kids another four.  But we still have all summer to look forward to with glorious hacking on a daily basis, great!

This whole episode started me down the path of questioning all the decisions that I have made in the last 13 years of my life with children trying to find the specific decision that lead us down the path that brought us to the situation we now deal with.  Was it 12 years ago when we made a conscience decision to hold off on all vaccines for our oldest son who had a condition that would have been exasperated by the chemicals in the vaccines?  Could the vaccines have stopped this?  Not for me.  And possibly not for my oldest son either, as the childhood vaccine wears off after 10 years.    Was it our decision to enroll our kids this past year in a public charter school rather than continuing to home-school?  My oldest son informs us that many other students in his classroom were coughing around the time he contracted it.  So that might have been it.  Yet there is an outbreak now in the U.S. and adults are the main transmitters of this illness.

I could go on like this forever to no end and to no benefit.  It is easy to pinpoint where things go wrong if we could trace our decisions far back enough to the original decision between choice 1 and 2 – like the two main branches of that oak tree.  But as we continue down our path making turns right and left along the way, sometimes cognizant of what we are doing and sometimes in complete heedlessness, we end up finding ourselves in the canopy of all the possible outcomes and most often than not, the leaf we find ourselves standing on touches many other leaves, bringing several decisive paths to the very same concluding circumstance.

So it leaves me at this conclusion; we are at the mercy of the Most Merciful, the All-Powerful, Free-Willing entity that we call by many names, one of which is God.  We have been given the freedom to choose what we will and good or bad they are our choices and we have to live with the consequences.  The amazing thing for me is this:  We don’t know the outcome of our choices, but God does.  Further, we do not have the luxury of not making choices, we are compelled to choose, and we have no choice in that.  So choose, and choose well, for the path that unfolds before you will be of your own choosing.

Peace

©2010 Organic Light Pan. All Rights Reserved.

However behind all the glitz and glamor of being an international internet star, a website is nothing more than a collection of computer files written in obscure languages that relatively very few of us understand or even know how to “speak”, HTML, ASP, PHP, CSS and the list of acronyms goes on.  Add to that the responsibility of maintaining a website and updating it often with new content for visitors and the job becomes almost monumental.  The last thing a webmaster wants to deal with is a downed website.

Now a website, this collection of computer files, has to sit somewhere on a computer’s hard drive, after all it is their only existence.  In fact they must be in at least two physical places, the computer where the files were initially written and the computer that hosts those files and serves them up when requested.  Now I suppose they could be served up from the same computer that they were written on but more on that later.

Now in order for those files to appear in an internet browser window on your computer, just like this journal entry appears on yours right now, your internet browser had to make a request for those files to be displayed.  The process of how that happens rests on another acronym, the URL, or Uniform Resource Locator, also known as the domain name.  The URL is essentially an address, much like the mailing address of your home, only in this case the address is to the location of where the computer files you wish to see are located or “housed”.  The typical example of a URL is http://www.organiclightphoto.com.  Only computers do not do well with written words that we can understand, but rather are much more comfortable with numbers.  So every URL translates into a set of four three digit numbers separated by periods, as in this example, 72.249.5.10 known as the IP address.  Each number can take on a value from 0 to 255.  Every computer that has access to the internet will have this set of four numbers assigned to it.

Computers that house websites and serve them up for viewing when requested are called servers.  Servers come in two varieties, those that run Microsoft Windows as an operating system and those that utilize UNIX as the operating system.  One is based on free open source code and the other is not.  The majority of servers, about 60%, are machines running the UNIX environment.  Each operating system “speaks” and “understands”  a different language and this is where I believe my WHOAs started.

Eight years ago, a friend of mine called me up out of the blue and asked me why I did not have a website showcasing my photography.  I had dabbled a bit in HTML but really did not know what I was doing, and asked him how I should go about getting one.  He then offered to build one for me!  About 6 months later www.organiclightphoto.com was born.  He designed the website to be what is known as dynamic, that is the webpages responded dynamically to the requests made and content was delivered via information stored in a database rather than all statically present in an HTML page.  It was cutting edge stuff at the time and he wrote the pages using ASP, a dynamic coding script developed by Microsoft.  At the time very few servers were able to host such a website and my friend found an outfit that could provide the service we needed.

As the years went on the service of that company went from good to worse to nearly non-existent.  Two years ago I decided to start this web journal, aka blog, and started to download the free code from the WordPress.org site.  My next Whoa was about to turn the corner.  PHP what’s that?  Well it was another scripting language used to deliver up dynamic websites much like ASP did but was built up and around the UNIX operating system and was Open Source and free.  I contact my hosting company and asked if they could help me install WordPress.  They had a very difficult time doing so and had an even harder time maintaining and troubleshooting errors associated with it.  I was naive and the hosting company gave me little in the way of educating me on the trouble.

So I begin the search for a hosting company on my own, without the help of my friend who by now had moved on to medical school and left me with an ASP website and a Sam’s Teach Yourself ASP 3.0 text book to take care of and update the website.  I was doing a pretty good job of keeping the site maintained and even wrote several new pages confidently.  So I find a hosting company, claiming that they could host both ASP and PHP with direct specifications that WordPress was supported.  I sign up with them and upload my website files to their servers and trouble shoot the pages to make sure they work properly on the new servers.  “Whoa!  You mean each server is different?  You mean I have to go through tens of pages to change paths pointing to the files – your kidding right?”  “I use files all through out my pages to bring up photos, and buttons, and graphics.  That’s thousands of lines of coed that I have to re-write just to get them to work on your servers – that’s not right!”  I complained to the technical support for about a week, and finally a straight answer from a top level technician – “no you only need to change the path where you specifically use an ‘include’ statement to bring in code from another file”.  Phew, what a relief that was, but Whoa, was that a shock.  I finally get the website working on the new server and now I have to cancel service with the old host company and have the IP address of my site changed to the new server which can take some time, because as I found out it is not generally the host company who has control over the website URL.

Whoa!  Hold on a minute who owns my website name?  When a website URL is chosen it used to be that when it was registered it had to be done through another company that just registers and maintains URL’s and they may or may not actually host the website.  In my case the first hosting company did not handle domain names.  The problem early on was that domain name registrars sometimes placed the ownership of the domain with them rather than the actual site owner.  Luckily my friend had enough smarts to chose a reputable registrar and it was just a matter of contacting them and having the address to the site changed to the new server.  And not only that, but the domain name has to be registered to you, and you have to pay yearly to keep control of that name.  Let your registration expire and your domain name could be up for grabs.  Whoa!

So now the site is on the new server and the blog postings are rolling out and everyone is happy.  Suddenly May 6th, 2010 rolls around and my new host company sends an email informing me that they are migrating all the websites hosted to new and better equipment, a server upgrade.  Within 24 hours my website starts to act very funny.  The pages don’t load as fast anymore, images take a long time to download, and HEY! why do I keep getting a CGI error when I try to view my blog?  Whoa!  My site is not working!  The host company assures me that once the migration is done, these anomalies will go away.  Four days pass and nothing is any better, no response from tech support other than the issue is under review and a resolution will be found shortly.  This was not acceptable!  For now, the website was not just a place to showcase my photos, but it was how I communicated with my patrons and customers.  I was in the midst of my yearly Open Studio Exhibit and I was running a promotion and needed the site to be functional, for now my livelihood was on the line.

I finally got a sliver of hope when one response from one tech support person sent me a message that highlighted how he had changed a line of my code in the homepage of the site alone and said the issue was now resolved and the support ticket was closed.  Gee! Thanks for fixing the one page of many that I have on your server.  You are just too kind!  I spent the next couple of days going through my multitude of pages fixing paths again.  You would think tech support could have at least told me that was the main problem.  Once I had the website back up and running, I then turned to the problem of the WordPress blog not working.  They kept beating around the bush on this one for about two weeks.

Finally one night I was surfing the internet and happened upon a page ranking website and I was trying to find my website’s ranking.  In the process I discovered that my website was actually housed on servers that belonged to a company with a name other than the host company I thought I was using.  I visited that company’s website and although they did say they provided hosting services, there was no mention of what plans they offered or any way to contact them, other than a page that listed the top managers of the company.  I found the email link to the VP of technical support.  I wrote him a brisk email and that I needed this hosting problem resolved.

The next morning I had an email from him apologizing for all the trouble and he informed me that the company that was hosting my website has gone out of business and they were taking over.

So just to let you all know, that if your hosting company ever tells you they are upgrading to a new server and / or they are migrating your site to new servers, you can be pretty sure they have been bought out and you are now working with a different company.  Yeah, Whoa!

So the VP puts me in direct phone contact with the lead tier 3 technician, who graciously explains to me the problem.  So get this.  This new company is using a new sophisticated hosting architecture where they have several redundant servers working back to back so if for any reason if one server goes down then another will automatically take up serving websites.  This way they can guarantee 99.99% uptime.  In addition, in order to speed up the serving of pages, they are using a new clustered CGI pool which again allows pages to be served up from any available server with out having to wait for a CGI connection to be freed up.  The problem as he explained it is that with my site written in ASP and the blog written in PHP the CGI cluster is having a hard time translating bwtween the two codes, ASP and PHP, being that PHP is native on UNIX systems and ASP on Microsoft systems.  Huh!?  Whoa!  You mean…?  But wait it gets better.  On the old servers before the ‘migration’ each domain name was treated as its own domain.  Now however with this new architecture, the domain is now under the account name and not under the actual www.organiclightphoto.com.  So when trying to resolve the differences between the ASP and PHP under the same “domain” it is getting confused.  His conclusion was that he felt the new servers would never be able to serve up both the ASP site and the PHP blog with any more than about 50% reliability, that is 50% of the time the blog would not load properly and his only real suggestion was to find a different hosting company that still used the old architecture, but warned me that it would probably end up being a small “mom & pop” type shop.  I tried to come up with other solutions for them to try but in the end, decided that it was time to find some other company.  Whoa!

So in the meantime I asked that they return my website to the old servers until I could find a new host.  They gave me about three weeks before the old servers were to be turned off for good.  And so a mad rush started to find a new hosting company that could handle both ASP and PHP on the same server and deliver both my website and the WordPress blog.

I found several, and they all sounded good, the price was right and I finally made a decision on a small company out of the Midwest, that offered dedicated IP addresses for a domain name.  Whoa!  I discovered that most hosting companies when they assign an IP address it is assigned to a server rather than an individual domain, and then software resolves the final calls to serve up a site.  Its called shred hosting.  This is fine, except what if other websites housed on that server using that same IP address deliver X-rated material or has been black listed for spam or malware, then the entire IP address and any website under that IP address will be blacklisted and not show up on search engine pages.  Yeah Whoa!  So I signed up for a free 30 day trial at this one host, only to find out a day or two later that customer complaints were a mile long with complaints about sites being hacked repeatedly, little or no technical support, and lots of server down time!  It really is Caveat Emptor!  Once I discovered these issues I quickly canceled my service and the search went on.  I quickly discovered web hosting company review websites where each company was reviewed but there were conflicting reports until I discovered that some of the review sites were owned by some of the very web hosting companies themselves.  So I turned to the Better Business Bureau website and discovered which companies had the best track records.  The original host from 2002 had a D- rating!  The second host I used had an A+ rating, but with over 135 complaints in the last 36 months.  The new host I found, but quickly canceled, also had an A+ rating but again with over 100 complaints in the last 36 months.  Almost all the hosting companies I found were riddled with customer complaints, except for one, the company I am with now.  They have an A+ rating, and only 1 complaint, that is correct, 1 complaint in the last 36 months.  No matter where I looked I could not find any disfavor with this one company.  The final Whoa!

So here I am now with my website, www.organiclightphoto.com, as well as two more sites that are in development hosted with this new company.  So who are they, you ask?  3Essentials.com.  I have only been with them for about a week or so, but so far so good.  Everything seems to be running smoothly and I hope I will not have to move my site anywhere else for a very long time.  If you are looking to host a website, or a blog either on a Windows server or a Unix server for a resonable price, I would check out www.3essentials.com for your self.

So what am I going to do now?  Well I do plan to slowly switch my website over from the ASP scripting language to the PHP scripting language.  This way my entire site will be written in PHP and I can better choose if I want to host my website on a UNIX or Windows server and allow for better portability if the need ever arises again.  So be careful out there as the woes of maintaining a website and finding a reputable and dependable web hosting company can have you saying ‘Whoa!’ quite a bit.

Peace

©2010 Organic Light Pan. All Rights Reserved.

The drawing was determined by random.org, using their thrid party random draw service.

The drawing was completed and the winner of this year’s drawing goes to Gina Nelson of Campbell Ca!

The drawing was amongst 29 entrants and the results can be viewed on the random.org website at THIS LINK.  It will be a permanent record at random.org and every entrant can verify that they were in the drawing by entering their first and last name in the entrant box in the following format (e.g. Youssef Ismail).

I want to thank everyone who participated in the promotion and supported Organic Light Photography with a purchase at the SVOS exhibit.  I truly appreciate your support.

Once again, Congratulations to Gina Nelson!

See you all again next year if not sooner.  Peace.

©2010 Organic Light Pan. All Rights Reserved.

I also initiated a FREE Photo Giveaway this year during these past three weeks.  Any SVOS visitor, patron or even website visitor who sent in an email entry was entered in a drawing for a FREE matted Studio sized photograph of their choice.  I am still accepting entries until midnight tonight, May 16, 2010.  Once the entry period closes, I will be entering all the participants in at random.org and will announce the winner here on the blog Wednesday May 19th, 2010.  Good Luck to all who entered.

Finally the once-a-year SVOS discount comes to a close at midnight as well, so if you have not put in an order, do it now.  In the past I have used a mystery coupon with a unique code asinged to each and every SVOS promotion card that I either mailed or passed out.  Visitors presenting the card would then find out how much the card was worth towards a purchase of a photograph.  This year, I guess I was just lazy and offered a 15% discount across the board.  Thanks to all of you who made use of this discount.  Your purchase was geratly appreciated.

So stay tuned for the FREE Photo winner announcement in a few days.  Now, its time for a shower, dinner and bed.

Peace.

©2010 Organic Light Pan. All Rights Reserved.

A few days ago during the first of three weekends of the 2010 Open Studio exhibit, I included my 4×5 camera as part of the show.  Placed on its tripod it served to initiate conversation about how the displayed photographs were made.  I warned my children to stay away from the tripod and not to engage in horseplay in or around the exhibit.  Little was heeded of what I said.

Late on the first day while I worked in the studio just a few feet from the display outside, I heard a crash.  As I peered out the door I find my youngest on the ground wrapped around the legs of the tripod and the camera…well it was not pretty.

As the camera lay on the ground that afternoon, I scolded my young daughter for what she had done.  I sent her to her room in tears and once I picked up the camera and examined it to find the damage I returned to her room and scolded her further.  I made up my mind not to speak to her until she came forward and apologized for what she had done.

I picked up the camera and removed it from the tripod and just set it on my living room floor and continued with the exhibit meeting and speaking with visitors, all the while wondering how I was going to continue making photographs without a camera.

That night I searched for a replacement online.  Disappointed with what I found, I retired.  The next morning I proceeded to disassemble my camera and asses the true extent of the damage.

Taking the camera apart was a bit intimidating, but once the screws were removed and the full extent of the damage seen, it did not seem like the damage was not repairable

The broken side rail was fractured in two places and ran back about two inches.

I used a liberal amount of Elmer’s Wood glue and clamped the pieces back in place and waited for the glue to dry.

For the remainder of the day I did not speak to my daughter.  Although to her it seemed as if the incident never occured!   Throughout the day she would call to me with her sweet little voice, “Babaa…”  It was absolutely heart wrenching not replying to her calls.  When she would persist, I would turn away from her hoping that she would get the message and show me some remorse for what she had done.

The next morning I came into the studio to examine the camera.  The glue had dried sufficiently and I proceeded to stress the joints lightly to see if they would give.  Just then my daughter walked in and with the sweetest of voices said “Baba, I’m sorry”.  I asked her why she was apologizing and she said “for breaking your camera” and then began to cry.  I gave her a hug and dried her tears and then I asked her what she thought I should do now without a camera.  Her reply, “I’ll make you a new one!” About a day later, a perfect little box camera, complete with tripod was sitting on the dining room table and  is now part of my camera collection. Getting it to work is a whole other ball of wax.

Later that day after putting the 4×5 camera back together   I was reflecting on what had transpired.  In some respects I had, at least for a day, forsaken my little girl.  It was painful to do so, but I wanted to show her my displeasure in what she had done.

I then pondered on our condition, that is the human condition on a whole, with regards to the state of our world.  Everything is chaotic.  I began to wonder if our collective behavior, our plundering of the Earth and of each other and our general disobedience to our Creator has not in some ways rendered us forsaken with respect to the Divine.  Yes we still have our daily bread, at least most of us, but where have the blessings in that bread gone?  Why is it that the food we eat has become so unhealthy?  Where have the blessings in our time vanished to?  Most of us work everyday of the week just to keep afloat leaving us with no time for what is important in life – namely family.  And what has happened to the blessings of family?  It used to be that when hardship fell, family was there with a net to catch you and get you back on your feet.  Today in place of family, we have turned to virtual digital friends in cyberspace – but they really don’t exist outside of the computer monitor that you see them on.  And more than half of all those trying to start their own families end up broken in divorce!  That should be very alarming.

Are we in fact forsaken?  I hope not, I want my prayers and calls heard and answered.  Be excellent to each other my fellow cybernauts, and be good with God.  Let not our actions be a reason for finding ourselves without the hand of providence there to guide us.

Peace.

P.S.  I really like my new camera.

P.P.S.  I think the repair on the 4×5 will work, the camera seems functional.

©2010 Organic Light Pan. All Rights Reserved.

This year, the sale will go on for the entire three weeks, from May 1st to May 16th, whether the purchase is made in person or online, there is a 15% discount on all photographs, custom posters and note cards.

In addition, anyone who makes a purchase in person or online, or visits the Open Studio Exhibit, or even just visits the website and sends in a name, email and mailing address, will be entered into this year’s FREE Photo Giveaway.  The lucky winner will be drawn randomly using random.org and will receive one Matted Studio Series photograph of their choice!

So to enter, visit the Exhibit in the next three weeks or go online and send in an entry from the Contact Page.  I will enter your name in the drawing.  The winner will be announced on Wednesday May 19th here on the Organic Light Pan web journal.  Good Luck to all who enter!

For more information on the exhibit and where the Organic Light Photography Studio is located, visit the Exhibits Page on the web site.

See you all soon.

UPDATE:  I was asked if I would consider residents outside of the USA for the FREE photo giveaway.  I considered it all day, and have come to the conclusion that I will honor all visitors, worldwide.  Shipping will be interesting as I cannot gauge the final cost, but I will open this contest for all – worldwide.  So send in your entries and good luck!

©2010 Organic Light Pan. All Rights Reserved.