Growin' Up

I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere and you know it's really hard to hold your breath / I swear I lost everything I ever loved or feared, I was the cosmic kid in full costume dress / Well my feet they finally took root in the earth but I got me a nice little place in the stars / And I swear I found the key to the universe in the engine of an old parked car

(Growin' Up, Bruce Springsteen)

Lonesome tree, Lüneburg, Germany. May 2010.

The picture above is the result of combining several different images (see below). For the first one, I lit up the foreground with the lights of my car (373 seconds, F/22, ISO 160). The second one was shot at ISO 6400 and exposed for 120 seconds at F/22 to add some atmospheric lights to the background. The third picture was an even longer exposure (323 seconds, F/16, ISO 6400) and I lit up the foreground again. To achieve the result in the picture above, I used #1 once, and both #2 and #3 twice. I hope you like it... I haven't done that kind of stuff before.

Fellow photographer and friend Brooke - we've been following each other's photography-wise "growin' up" for a long time now - recently blogged about how she noticed that most people give up their dreams and passions. She ain't one of them and neither am I. Most of my buddies don't understand how I can possibly enjoy standing outside in the cool night taking pictures. But they're also the ones who study something that's related to economics, such as business studies, because all that matters to them now is how much money they're gonna make in the future. But what's all the money worth if you're not doing something that you enjoy doing? If you get up early in the morning, knowing that you're gonna hate the rest of day because you're working a job that you don't like? 

I've chosen two lines of work - archaeologist and photographer - which don't leave me with such big chances of making a lot of money (in fact, even some of our lecturers have told us that most archaeologists are unemployed), and it's gonna require a bloody huge effort of hard work to get somewhere in life, and a lot of courage too, and here applies a quote from To Kill A Mockingbird... in this masterpiece of a book, Atticus Finch says about courage, "It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."  - If only to prove them all wrong. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in the ending of The Great Gatsby, "So we beat on, boats against the current..." - and that's what it's all about. Not giving up, that is. 

I just wish that more young people wouldn't just give up on trying to turn their passions into a job and making their dreams come true.

Have a great week y'all.

- Dom