And, perhaps most random of all. The triumphant return of Abby Verthein to my blog. Wahoo and stuff.

Film photos coming soon. Keep checking.

Today I ditched my longboard while moving at roughly 30 miles per hour. I managed to get four steps in, tuck and plant on my shoulder, and roll about 7 or 10 times to a stop on the asphalt. This could potentially have been embarrassing, except that both Josh and Joel managed to fall as hard or harder at the same speed, on the same hill, at the same time. No joke. Thirty miles an hour is a tough speed to maintain stability at if you’ve never tried it on a longboard, and this became extremely evident to us all. We have varying levels and locations of cuts, scrapes, bruises, and rectal dysfunctions (I won’t name names, but I’ll just say it wasn’t Josh or myself), and after we got up and kind of gained our bearings (which took me the longest, having spun so many times), we laughed hysterically for some time after that before making our way back to the car. With that many scrapes on your body, even the wind hurts your skin, so it was… interesting.

My biggest regret is that Tim wasn’t there to fall with us. That being said, his luck isn’t great, and he’d probably be hospitalized for missing the asphalt and plummeting off the cliff (no joke) that was to one side of the road.

My friends and I, we are so safe.

Also, Happy Birthday Beth!

I received a 500GB internal hard drive for my Mac Pro today, and so I finally have the capacity to store all of my photos from the past two and a half years in a single place. Better than that, I can store them all inside of Apple Aperture, which makes sortation, viewing, rating/ranking, and batch editing much easier.

I have mixed feelings about the process so far. On a technical level, it’s pure brilliance. Select a bunch of folders, click import, and we’re golden.

On a personal level, it’s a little more complicated.

Two and a half years of missed focus, bad exposures, lame or cliché compositions, and a general sense of ineptitude. Failed experiments.

On the bright side, I’ve come across dozens, if not hundreds, of photos that I had completely forgotten about. Photos that somehow evaded my selects previously, or that I couldn’t use before, but now can because of greater editing proficiency and understanding of the digital processes. Photos that were immediately recognized as excellent quality, but editing had to be postponed because of another project of greater urgency.

The greatest complication though, is Jennifer. I’ll spare you all the story, but the long and short of it is that she and I were together for most of those two years, and are not anymore.

Every dozen or so photos I’ll hit a string of photos of her, or of me that she took. Sometimes it reminds me of really hard times, where she and I struggled, either with each other, circumstance, her parents, or all of the above. But some of the times cannot be described under any category other than the happiest moments of my life.

A truly great photograph will have an emotional impact on anyone who views it. I have a fair number of photos that meet that criteria (well, maybe not anyone, but certainly your average individual. But it’s very strange how great the effect is on the person or people involved. How a simple image can bring back what feels like an entire lifetime that one had forgotten.

All things considered, I think going back in time isn’t so bad.