the stillness of the photographic image

Another week starts tomorrow. One with new goals and resolutions. As you all know, my blog is not a public blog. I am not an avid blogger, and I don't really care about blogs other than those of my friends. But I will admit that I have done a search here and there to see if there are any American ex-pats living in Belgium who are sharing their thoughts and observations about that odd little (seemingly humourless-- as someone called it) country... Well, I found one, but I think if I were to meet that person we would not like each other very much. Plus, said person simply wrote too darn much for even his best friends to remain interested I'd say. In my search though, I also came upon a blog titled "frombelgiumwithlove" ! Now, that had to be checked out. This person hardly uses words at all, but posts his photographs. And very amazingly captivating photographs at that! Anyone interested in the still image is hereby encouraged to go take a peek. It reminded me of the fact that I too love photography and that sadly, I have not been able to do very much about this lately. But, even while taking random shots -- hooray for the digital camera and its minimal size, for I always have it with me now -- there is the occassional interesting subject just waiting to be captured. So, I thought, inspired by the 44-year old stranger in French-speaking Belgium, I would post, completely randomly, two of my slightly-better-than-the-random-shot pictures. I think these are perfect proof that even in every-day life the surreal and mysterious are right there in front of us. Often while we are moving we don't notice it, it takes one to look through a camera to halt that moment and realize how bizarre it really is. It is the stillness of the image that truly makes it come to live. To keep these images captivating, I will not explain their origins, except that one was taken in Hasselt, Belgium, and the other in Austin, Texas, from whence I write and greet you with love.