In a (New) World of My Own

The week was long, the clients were many, Mariah got ever more pregnant (two weeks left!) and I had a whole bunch of clients from start to finish. Caira’s wit got ever-sharper, I stumbled round and about in a tired daze and at the end of it all, Photos Were Taken. I had a fantastic time with Hillary and Heather shooting their families and children out at Cottonwood Canyon Park, one of the best hidden gems in Las Vegas-spacious greenery, beautiful scenery and surroundings, and at most hours an almost total lack of people. Win.

I’m not officially photographed out.

Bah.

I’ve been told by some that the last post doesn’t count.

So.

I hate talking about myself on my blog, which is ironic. I’ve always considered it too easy to turn your blog into a self-aggrandizing or self-justifying platform. When you’re a small blog like mine whose regular readership I can literally count on two hands it becomes an even more pathetic act…and it’s not beyond the reach reasonable assumption that I’m doing just this right now:

Nothing in this universe is perfect or permanent. One of the most beautiful objects in the sky, the Pillars of Creation within the Eagle Nebula was ultimately created by – and is believe to have been destroyed by – a supernova, an explosion of such raw power that it is almost incomprehensible. And what causes a supernova? A star running out of fuel and dying.

Nothing can be perfect, and yet it can be beautiful still.

My marriage wasn’t brought about (rarely, for an Irishman!) by an explosion-related death, but it is still an imperfect creation by imperfect people. We fight, we mis-communicate, we deliberately misconstrue each other, we sulk and we ignore each other, but we still wake up each morning as a couple and muddle our way through another day hack our way through another day with dull and blood-soaked machetes. My real shock is that we don’t wake up each morning screaming through the shock of realization that it wasn’t a dream.

There aren’t many of them, to be certain, but that makes the danger all the more keen. Maybe you’ve known some of them at one time or another. This is actually pretty likely as many of them are prolific socialites. Or maybe you’ve just seen them in passing; some bare and hairy knees spotted in a shocking and distracting moment. Car crashes aren’t unknown after these distracting encounters, and indeed it is well-known that several highland clans used this as a tactic: Flash your knees and then slaughter the survivors.

They are the Scottish and they are everywhere.

In the last week I’ve seen a shocking amount of honest-to-god Scots wandering about North Las Vegas, considering where we are. Two on Saturday, three on Sunday and one hairy bastard at six o’clock this morning wearing a plaid kilt. The knees, oh god, his knees. I tasted vomit right then.

Mumbling aside, all the highlanders wandering about have put me in mind of how much of a transient city that Las Vegas is. We all come and go, but only a few stay here, and only a few people whom I’ve met, such as my sister-in-law are actually native to here.

This is just one of those evening’s where I want to scurry away and play video games, but no!, I find myself here updating my site. It’s an ample moment; Mariah, Caira, and pretty much everyone else have gone up to Mount Charleston, to set up camp for the weekend. I have the house to myself, my feet are up, and I have the Itch. So I type.

On the whole I had a horrible day. I’m not a person to deride my employer in public, but I will say here and now that working for a family member and living in the same house with them doesn’t really make for an ideal situation. With a little luck I will land another permanent job soon – I’ve put my resume and portfolio out and about as much as I can for most of the retail, photographic, and warehousing jobs that I can find.

Please for the love of god someone hire me!

Moving on, I’ve gotten much better in the use of a flashgun, I have my first freelance work in a while lined up for Saturday night (birthday party in a club), and my business cards shipped this morning.

I hope a good job shooting, word of mouth, and business cards to hand out will all spur on more photographic engagments for me. Las Vegas is honestly an extremely cut-throat and supersaturated place for a photographer. Everyone wants to be here and everyone wants to make it. Fie.

Caira….Caira is absolutely insane. Starkers. Mad. Lunatiked. Batshit crazy, to steal words from Mariah’s mouth. I’ve a few really adorable photos of her on the camera from last night, but my most recent photos online are from my backlog of photos of the Mariah, the twins, and the cats, all which are endearingly cute:

Mariah

Athena

Scooter

There, one of each. For the rest of everything, go look at my Flickr page.

/fenster

I guess yesterady wasn’t such a complete writeoff after all. I managed to get a few (94 :) photos of a street soccer match out behind the Jervis shopping centre before the gang of teenagers chased me off..literally. I dropped down to medium jpeg resolution, set the camera to monochrome and started snapping madly. Considering the only lens with me was the 50mm I’m happy that any came out okay.

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You can find the balance of photos in my Dublin set.