Deep Sky | Mark Lindsay
I rubbed my sandpaper eyes. I realized that I forgot to blink—for about an hour. Deep into the development of my new web site I began to wonder. Were we humans really meant to co-exist with computers? PHP, CSS, HTML, FTP...blah, blah, blah. After my fifteenth phone call to tech support I rubbed my sandpaper eyes. I forgot to blink.
The ability to send my images around the world with lightning speed seduces me. When I was a kid, my photos lived in a box. Now they live on the Internet. I wonder if anyone really looks at them. Maybe a trillion photos live on The World Wide Web. What makes mine a reason to stop and look? I used to put people to sleep with my old box of photos. Is it any different now? It doesn't matter. The seduction has hooked me. So, I sit here and develop my online galleries, hoping that it all matters.
I spent two, solid months on this web site. I'm an artist, not a programmer or web developer. I almost drowned in computer code and style sheets. Finally, last week, I escaped to photograph the sky. Like an escaping criminal, I looked up with a squint, my pale skin reddening. A raven squawked overhead. Were we really meant to stare at a world of glowing phosphors? Are our brains wired for the logic of bits and bytes and "404" error messages? A turkey vulture looked down at me, not caring about my musings. Maybe he figured I was ready to drop. At that point I could swear he was drooling.
The sky deepened as the sun nestled into the trees. It was an affirmation to know that the real world was still rotating. My sandpaper eyes began to see and began to blink. I lifted my camera and...suddenly I was a photographer again.