This has been a hell of a week. I’ve spent more time talking with doctors and having blood drawn than I have in the past 20 years combined. To say I’m not having fun with this would be an understatement. We’re still waiting on final results but the prognosis is looking something less than peachy. That pattern looks to continue over the next two weeks as well, so I’m not going to be overly aggressive about shooting new material.

Also coloring this week has been a sad fact of life for two of my boys: they’ve each lost a co-worker to suicide. This is never easy no matter how many times it happens. Whether we particularly like our co-workers or not, we spend too much time with them to not be emotionally affected when something of this magnitude happens. I’ve been fortunate in recent years to not have to endure this but for my youngest son this was the first time and it hit him particularly hard. As a parent, I wish I could protect them from this pain, but that is part of our reality.

So, when considering what to process this week, I dropped back, again, to 2012 and picked up a set of photos shots in low light. Looking through the originals, I noticed that there were a lot of bad frames, images that were not positioned within the camera’s range in a manner that would normally be considered attractive. On their own, these bad frames are not useable. Together, though, with the right processing, they become interesting works of art.

There are only nine this week because there simply wasn’t enough time. Life is crazy. Life is fleeting. Sometimes, we need to realize the value in our less-than-positive moments. They’re still part of our lives and are important pieces in what makes our lives beautiful.

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