This street is an interesting one. Apart from being on of the more shady areas in it is shady for another reason.
It is lined with Witstinkhout trees (white stinkwood if you’re look for a direct translation) and as the seasons change from Summer to Autumn and then into Winter this street, and others, are filled by yellow leaves lying on the side of the road. Makes for a nice photo opportunity if there is a strong breeze around.
Below is the SOOC version from my phone.
Autumn Leaves in color.
Looking forward to seeing more of this street in the coming months.
For some time now I’ve been thinking about a certain topic: urban decay.
Urban decay (also known as urban rot, urban death or urban blight) is the sociological process by which a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude. There is no single process that leads to urban decay.
Looking around the town where I live there are some signs of urban decay. Infrastructure falling into disrepair mostly. Roads are disintegrating as no maintenance is done on them.
Another problem is refuse being dumped on corners. This morning I was on my way to work and took this photo.
Urban decay.
To the left you can see a few refuse bags lying on the side of the road. To the right of the image underneath the trees there was about ten or twelve refuse bags full of various sort of garbage.
It seems as a part of a town, city or country starts to collapse the people in the area follows suit. The mindset around keeping your city / town clean disappears. The morality seems to disappear.
This image is in one of the more “seedy” areas of town. I’ve been working here for about 10 years and I’ve seen some weird things here. People on drugs. Fist fights. Petty crime. ATM scammers. Sex workers, pushers, users. Guys on CAT, girls on meth. Police raids and mob justice. People getting killed and people dying from drug overdoses.
If nothing else, this place is interesting, at least from the perspective of a photographer and a storyteller.
I saw a short on YouTube earlier this week where the topic was devoting one day a week to your craft.
“You have to graft* at your craft” or something similar is what the gent in the video said. Long story short (no pun) you have to set aside time to work on your photography, writing or whichever pursuit you want to follow.
For me this one day is a Sunday. My only day away from work. A day when I can just chill and focus on photos & writing. My goal is to turn this hobby into something a bit more profitable. And here is where it can get tricky. Turning your passion into your job often trips people up.
But let’s say you only want to do your craft as a hobby. You are content with doing it one day a week. It’s important to find this one day somewhere. Carve out a bit of time from your schedule and do your craft.
Along with this decision I’ve started to put myself out there a bit more. Give out a business card here and there. Contacting a local church to find out if they might need a photographer for some free work. Doing small things like this pushes me outside my comfort zone. Just like it did when I this & this.
Sometimes we need to step outside our comfort zones to progress.
