MySpace Pictures

One of the questions I always get when people look through my pictures: "Why are they all black and white?!"

So I remember, from the beginning of high schools, I always kind of wanted to be the shutterbug of the crew. I didn't appreciate pictures back then as much as I did now - probably not until 11th grade or so - but I remember I had some little amount of interest in having a camera with me at most times. Sadly, that didn't happen... my family had one crappy Kodak digital camera for a long time, and then my mom got a new one, too, but I thought it was also pretty crappy, and there was NO WAY I could carry that thing around with me - it was just too big.

But I did try, sometimes, to take it around with me. I remember at one point near the end of junior summer, after I got home from PGSS, I wanted to make a pictureboard [on corkboard] with all my senior friends [Class of 2007 friends]. So we went out to Target and found the largest corkboard we could - it was probably 3' x 2' or so - and it cost $14.99. That was right after we found out about the "$20 Rule," so when we went to the cashier - it was Kia Brinkley who checked us out - we assured her it was actually $10, and she had to give it to us. We were pretty happy about that. We also got some thumb tacks, I think. Clear ones.

I forget if I took pictures that night, or somtime earlier that year, but there are three pictures from that time period that really stand out to me.

One of them is of Erin. We were at the Kid's Dream Playground for some sort of party, I forget exactly whose, in the mid-afternoon. It was a really nice day. She was wearing her huge, dark sunglasses that only certain people can pull off, and her black-and-white striped jacket-like thing that I don't know the name for. I think she was also holding a cup in one hand, and she may have had her mouth open just a tiny little bit. I remember thinking it was a good picture of her.

The second one I remember is one of Beth and Steve. This was when Steve would always grope and feel and invade Beth's personal space. We were standing outside of Beth's house - we were always at Beth's house, of course - near our cars, walking in from wherever we were, and I really wanted a picture of Beth and Steve being Beth and Steve. He was wearing his signature green striped shirt, but I can't quite remember what Beth was wearing. He was jumping on her and trying to lick her face, and she was screaming and shouting and playfully trying to get him off of her.

The third picture was my favorite. It was of Beth and Steve, laying on Beth's bed in her room, where we always spent all of our time. Beth was actually on the floor, and Steve was slightly sprawled out on the bed. There was bottled water on the bed that someone hadn't thrown into the recycling bin in the opposite corner of Beth's room yet. The bed wasn't made and you could see her red sheets. They were both smiling a lot. It's a great picture. It was pretty much everything I wanted to remember about that summer.

Those are just about the only three pictures of mine from the first three years of high school. I put them on the corkboard along with a few others. One day, we had a corkboard-picture-finding party... we picked out a ton of old pictures, but for some reason we never got around to putting them up. I guess I know the reason, but I just don't want to talk about it right now.

Sometime after PGSS, I was talking to Alex DiJulio while at Beth's house - standing in her kitchen and kind of having an aside with him - when I saw him looking through his pictures on his camera. I can't explain quite why, but I thought they were all particularly beautiful pictures, and they were all in black and white. I asked him what kind of camera it was [Canon Digital Elph], and whether or not he liked it. I knew he was pretty hardcore into photography, so when he said he liked it, I knew it was probably a pretty safe bet. I asked for that camera for Christmas, and I think it's pretty much the best material Christmas present I've ever been given. I took something along the lines of 1700 pictures in the next eight months, most of them in black and white.

I think the reason I remember that night and that conversation with Alex so clearly was because I thought, You know, if I could take pictures that beautiful, I would take pictures all the time. And I sort of guessed that what I thought was so beautiful about the pictures was that they were black and white. So if I had that camera - just a small camera, good resolution, easy to transport, takes good black and white shots - I would finally start taking pictures like I had wanted to for so long. And I did. And I think I owe a lot of that to the fact that I find black and white pictures so incredible compared to normal colors.

So that's why I take black and white pictures, I guess. I always wanted to take pictures, but I was always disappointed with the ones that I took until I discovered I could take them all in black and white and I'd think they were all beautiful. So I take pictures in black and white because it's the only way I know how to make myself take pictures.

Peace out.