By the time this gets posted I’ll have completed one more year around the sun, 365 days of my life will have passed and gone forever, and I’ll have started another day wondering how many more I have left.
I know that sounds pretty dark and gloomy, but don’t get it twisted, I love celebrating my birthday, plus keep in mind that I’ve had the nickname Grim since I was 18 years old (There’s a good story that goes along with that, but I want to save it for another day). I’ve always been “that kind” of person, someone that is in all three states of being, and is slightly “grim” because of it. I’ve been able to see and remember my past very clearly, letting myself learn the positives and negatives from choices and experiences. I live most of my life in the present, focusing on the “right now” events and choices I make. And where I try not to wander to far into is the future, I still navigate my way through potential “road blocks” as I like to call them, that may come up, so I can better plan for resolutions to those road blocks. But I still try my best not to “plan in stone”, have singular solutions, or get too far ahead of myself.
At a young age, around 10-11 years old, I remember I kept hearing people tell me to “enjoy it while you can, you never know when it’ll end”. Now I know that those people were just trying to tell me to enjoy being a kid and enjoy the time playing with friends, before being burdened with the responsibilities that come with adulthood. But for some reason my brain took it a complete other way, and I started to think on it more in the way of “I should enjoy EVERYTHING as much as I can, since I’ll never know how much time I’ll have to enjoy anything”. Like I said, I’ve had a grim way of thinking for a long time.
I’ve done my best to explore, learn, have fun, experience, get beyond the fears of starting something new and find joy in so many things. To the point that I often get picked on (mostly out of good nature) for never sticking to one thing, and just as often as getting picked on I blame having ADD to get out of an explanation of why I do or think about things. When the truth is really quite simple to explain, but seems to be harder for people to comprehend, more so than I ever thought would anyway.
“I want to die fulfilled and proud of the things I’ve done/tried. Doing so by living an experienced life, not a boring one.”
“World Lungs”
One of very few images in my collection that has a more haunting (or “grim”) style look to it, and absolutely without a doubt in the top 10 of my favorite photos I’ve ever shot. Captured at Dirtfish Rally Driving School in Snoqualmie Washington, on November 26th, 2022 during the first track walk portion of Northwest Rally Association’s - Winter Series. A Rally-cross event I’d been invited to come try out shooting after doing Auto-cross events for a couple months.
The moment I saw this haunting tree will stick with me for a long time I’m sure. I was walking the track looking for the best spots to shoot from, and honestly kind of nervous about how the day was going to go (literally for no other reason than because my own brain was hyping things up more than need be). There was a fog so thick that morning that I actually didn’t even see most of the “good spots” until long after the race had started. So when walking the track my eyes were more focused on the closer sides of the path than in the distance, I was all of maybe 25 feet from this tree before noticing it, but once I did I stopped dead in my tracks. All I could do was stare at this tree, admiring the beauty of its bare branches and the shape it was seeming to create. While standing there in a daze I finally realized what those branches looked like, veins, with the overall shape of the tree looking like an enormous lung, vividly in detail due to the thick fog creating a perfect backdrop. This is the only photo I’ve captured that has had an immediate title, instead of waiting until post editing was done for the photo to “reveal” it’s title to me. (And yes I know how cheesy that all sounded. But is there really that big of a difference between an artist saying the same thing and a photographer, or “painter of light”, saying it? No. I didn’t think so.)
In some strange way that I can’t come to figure out how to properly describe, that tree helped me calm down and refocus, and after doing so I ended up coming away with some of my favorite automotive shots I’ve ever captured. You see I was too caught up in the future, over thinking stupid little things like “what do I do if the light isn’t bright enough, or is too bright”, “who’s going to possibly want to pick up my work, how am I going reach out to people, do I need to set aside time to go network with people?” All it took to straighten everything out was a tree, with its horrific and grim like looks (that still seemed to be so strangely calming), and BOOM, I was back. One big breath in, one big breath out, and I was ready to focus.
I’ve had a blast writing these Behind the Photo pieces, and I hope to keep it going. If there are any other pieces of my work that you’d like to read about, you are more than welcome to comment on here, or you can find your way to the “contact me” section of this website. Going forward I have thoughts of turning these blogs into videos as well, and hope to have those out soon.
If there are any of the 10 images throughout the Behind the Photo portion that you fell in love with, you can find them for purchase in the Image Shop. As a special thank you for reading this blog in its entirety use code GRIMBLOG for 20% off your entire order.
Thank you all so much, and until next time.
I’ll catch y’all later.
Andrew Hoyle - Grimlock Media
