If you have insomnia or sleep pattern issues, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. I read an article not to long ago about Puscifer bandmates different creative processes. Where one could create on demand and for another it takes some inspiration. I’m a little all over the place, especially once being in the sign industry. Making signs is more about creating readable signage than mind blowing art. Also writing and visual art works tend to shift for me in periods.
These periods tend to coincide with things going on in my life and what I like to call my personality. I think the DSM has a bunch of labels for my personality. Fuck the DSM if you’ve ever had a label hung around your neck. Embrace it, feel it, and move the fuck on with life the best you can. I’ve seen a lot of people in my days who can not do that. So with my insomnia driven by stress and loss I have learned to adapt to it and embrace I don’t operate 9 to 5 all the time. Furthermore these periods churn up the creative visions and inspirations that drive me as an artist and writer.
Now a little bit about this series of photos. I was up late night, early morning, stuck in a routine of driving and getting by and just sucking up the suck of life. I have been working on breaking through an anxious fear of driving late nights to roll with the punches of insomnia. The insomnia driven by stress in paying the bills and the anxiety driven by PTSD and CPTSD. I’m in deep debt, Photography is not cheap and I have yet to find patrons to help support the effort like the Medicis of the renaissance period. Oh yeah that tid bit of history, this blog post, this website, design and photo editing also cost $50k in education I’ve yet to pay for. Buy my stuff please!
Anyway moving on. Then a little reminder I set for myself alerted me to the Full Moon at 3 AM. The night had sporadic storms cast from Hurricane Kay off Baja California, so it was questionable if I could get a picture of the moon. By Sunrise I decided to charge up the batteries for my camera and set out with the intention of getting a full moon setting behind the cityscape of Phoenix.
Well I jumped in my car setting off for a position east of the city on McDowell Road at Papago Park. The way life goes, it went with a detour at my planned exit on 52nd Street. I thought maybe I could accomplish the photo from the Mill Avenue bridge in Tempe just like in my Harvest Moon photos from last year. But looking at the position of the moon I was off a good 20 degrees. I was losing time as the moon setting was growing larger. I made a U-Turn on Priest heading up to McDowell to my spot by the old stairs in Papago Park.
The moon quickly was obscured behind the distant clouds on the horizon. I still had some photos to take despite what life was throwing my way. It was a chance to get some clear shots after the rain cleared the sky of the usually hazy atmosphere. Then the sun started to rise kissing the cityscape from the tips of the sky scrappers and slowly working its way down their facades.
I knew I only had a few minutes to turn around for sunrise. It was better than imagined. The moisture with the sun created a dramatic warm glow through the cool clouds and fog pushing through the canyons between mountain ranges. These stair cases were made with the intention of communing with God, the Creator, the spirit of the universe, nature on Sundays.
I set up for panoramas knowing the best way to capture it might require a different lens, but also knew I could take several frames stacking them to bring out the best dynamic range and stitching them together for the epic view. It was a race against the sun rising and a large group of runners gathering at the base of the stairs. My intention was to create two halves with a top pano being the horizon and the bottom half featuring the stairs.
I was able to get a couple perspectives of the horizon, but capturing the stairs in the bottom half was thwarted by the local population exerting their right to be there too. Despite this nuisance to my creative process I soaked up the sun warmly illuminating the deep layers of the mountain ranges through the clouds and fog.
I included closer cropped images to show the details in the main panoramic photo. These images are meant for large walls for people to spend time finding all the little subtle nuances in the larger picture. Much like life, if you focus too much on the bigger picture you miss the tiny things that bring it all together. And if you focus too much on one tiny detail in life like the flaw of a human figure stretched and distorted you miss the whole point of communing with things greater than our understanding.
Muse Dream
There you are in a dream
The subconscious love affair
Your rejection didn’t seem real
Until deep in sleep
How does anyone continue?
A traitorous fantasy
Paralyzed in a vulnerable juxtapose
My own mind betrays me
