I just remembered that I forgot to share the good news with everyone that The Smithsonian featured a photo of mine last March. It appeared in a Click! Photography Changes Everything post in the webzine The Bigger Picture – Visual Archives and The Smithsonian.

I am honored even though I realize that The Smithsonian has featured photos by thousands of photographers over the years. Still, how many people can say that The Smithsonian featured a work of theirs. It’s exciting to be a part of a great American institution.

When I got a Flickr account in 2006, I felt compelled to publish every good photo I took. In turn, I felt compelled to document my life in photos so I could share those photos — my life — on Flickr. Then I got a Facebook and Twitter account, and I began to feel compelled to share my life there, too. I enjoyed the response, and that drove me to share more. There’s nothing wrong with the impulse to share experiences, but I have to believe that my life is worth living regardless of whether I’m acknowledged for it.

Maybe I’m having a midlife moment. I’m 42 years old. It’s unclear whether I’ve made a mark on the world. And it’s time to decide whether or not I care. I don’t have kids, my parents are getting older, and I don’t have a lot of siblings or cousins. Who is going to remember me? And does it even matter.

On the one hand, I am coming to terms with my nature. I need to communicate with others, to create my own expression and share it with the world. Looking at people’s enthusiastic self-expression in social media outlets, I can see that I am not alone.

On the other hand, I must resist the compulsion to share photos and status updates in order to add value to my experiences. I don’t need to be applauded for being cool or interesting or cultured. I don’t have to be told I have good taste or talent. It feels good, but becoming addicted to acknowledgment leads to a letdown when I don’t get it.

For a year or two now, I’ve debated whether to take my camera on certain adventures. I want to “show the folks back home!” but the equipment weighs me down and cramps my ability to enjoy my own adventure. I told my husband that I was beginning to question whether I could really experience a moment and record it at the same time, and ever since then he tells me, “live the moment, don’t record it.”

I’m not about to stop publishing to social media, but I will continue to remind myself that what matters is not whether people love your life when you’re dead. What matters is that you love your life while you’re living.

As I lay in bed early this morning, I heard thunder, saw the occasional flash of lightning, and then saw the color of the sky change into a natural sepia tone. It was such a phenonmenon that I got out of bed early, turned off the house alarm, got my camera, and went outside to capture the moment.

My friend Robert, who took this photo of his daughter after a self-portrait of mine, writes:

I’ve wanted to take this pic for a long time. I saw Daniel’s pic and thought to myself “I have one of those whistles somewhere around the house.”

My daughter didn’t need any coaxing to pose for this as she’s always had a very high opinion of Dan. She’s in good company.

Wow! I’m flattered. When someone takes what you’ve created and creates something else in response, that’s interactive, co-creative art! That’s community. I love it!

P.S. I’ve met Robert and his daughter Stephanie on a few Flickrmeets and photo strolls.

The stations on the Valley Metro Light Rail alignment offer endless opportunities for reflection and photography. This morning, I got this photograph by stabilizing my G1 cameraphone against one of the I beams that suspend the sails, lights, text displays, PA speakers, security cameras, etc. And what I got was the beautiful reflections in the high gloss paint on the I beam!

The act of photographing reminds me of the constantly changing world and the preciousness of each moment.

Andy had set this artichoke on the kitchen windowsill. The artichoke was past its prime, but I liked the way it looked with the sun hitting it this morning, so I ran and grabbed my camera.

The light had changed in the 30 seconds it took me to get my camera, and even during the taking of several shots, the light kept changing. While seeing how the light kept changing, and how quickly I was losing the light that had originally caught my eye, I was reminded of the constant changes going on in the world around me (and in myself as well, I suppose), and the preciousness of each moment. As a photographer, I am "delineating light" (photos meaning light and -graphy meaning delineation, see etymology of ‘photography’). Since natural light is constantly changing, we as photographers capture fleeting moments of light.

But, as people, what do we miss that we don’t capture? Are there moments in our lives, in relationships with people, when the moment is right to be silent or speak up, to be still or to make a move, to look or to listen? Photography is a highly technical hobby as well as an art, and I find that I must remember, as a human being, that there is much to capture other than light.

I never realized their were multiple copies of this sculpture until I saw in at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts. I think the first time I saw the iconography was on a postage stamp. Taking this photo was funny. It seemed that everyone wanted their photo taken with it, and there were several photographers around. I waited patiently as one photographer took a series of shots of a couple in various poses around the sculpture. Just as they were leaving, I got ready to take my shot. Simultaneously, these exuberant little girls came running onto the scene. I snapped this photo figuring I might never get the sculpture alone. When they saw me, they stopped and stared at me like does in headlights, and I said, “I just wanted to get a photo of the sculpture by itself. It’ll just take me a second.” They left and I got my plain photo of the sculpture before they came back to play (or pose for their mother with the camera), but I like this one better.

I thought so! I love text forms, three-dimensional forms, and shadows. But right after I took this photo of a photography studio sign at Christown Spectrum Mall, a young woman security guard asked me to stop taking photos. I asked her if she were sure that no photography was allowed. She radioed her boss, and he said it was a mall policy: no photography without permission from mall management. She offered me the mall management phone number and I called it. They were closed for the weekend, but I left a message stating that I was just taking photos for my own artistic pleasure and that I believed it was my right to take photos in public places where there was no reasonable expectation of privacy, and besides, I wasn’t taking photos of people, just of the architecture. I left my number, so we’ll see what they say. Interestingly, this is the same mall in which one young woman asked me outside the brand-new Harkins Theatres if I were “newspaper.” I wonder why people are so finicky about photos being taken at this mall.

UPDATE: I just got a call back from the management office, and the manager explained to me that the mall was considered “private property / public access,” and that because it was private property, they had the right to set their own rules. He said he’s worked in malls since 1986, and it’s always been policy not to allow photography, and that it’s “gotten even worse since 2001.” He also mentioned that store owners don’t want their store fronts to be photographed since some people might be planning “acts of terrorism.”

I can understand store owners not wanting people to plan break-ins. But to me, the true “terrorism” since 9/11 is that ordinary citizens like me are suspected of terrorism, and that an artist is told that because of what happened on September 11, 2001, he cannot practice his art on September 23, 2007. Tell me, how long are people going to use 9/11/01 as a rationale for prohibiting innocent actions? Another five years? Another ten? Forever? When are things going to normalize? I can’t help but wonder how much more effectively we could fight terrorism if we stopped interfering with innocent citizens.

I read on the Harkins Theatres web site that they would be holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the grand opening of the Christown 14 theatres at 11:15 this morning. I got there just a couple of minutes late, but they had done the ceremony at around 10 because people had been lining up around the building and waiting since 6.

I had an interesting experience as I ran up to the theatre from my car with my camera: a young woman walked by and quickly asked, “Newspaper?” I said, “No,” and she said, “Just for your own enjoyment, then,” and walked to her car. She was wearing a backpack, and it made me wonder whether she were a journalist, and why she wanted to know. I just wanted to get a photo, and didn’t want to take the time to explain that I was a blogger of sorts, and although I wasn’t exactly “Newspaper,” I wasn’t just doing this for my own enjoyment, either. I saw this as an opportunity to take my new lens and battery grip out for a shoot and gain some “event photography” experience in the meantime.

Anyway, I get excited about urban renewal, cinema, theater, and architecture, so I enjoyed getting there and taking this photo even if I didn’t catch a ribbon-cutting and had to run off to work right after snapping a couple of shots.

I’m glad I looked professional enough to be mistaken for a newspaper photographer, though!

My partner Andy called to me from the back yard yesterday evening and said there was something he wanted me to see. He had moved a cut-off tree stump that we have in the back yard for decoration, and moving it had revealed a little mama lizard and her two tiny eggs underneath. Andy saw the mama lizard scurry off, and when he first showed me these tiny eggs, I thought they were Tic Tacs until he told me what had just happened. I had to run and get my tripod and macro lens and take a photo of this quick before the twilight faded away. Right after I took this photo (long 5-second exposure), we replaced the stump where it had been before, and we hope the lizard will come back to incubate her eggs.