seeing Jupiter and reading abram

Ismail, the man of adventures, asked if I wanted to go to the desert to watch some stars. We drove about an hour away from Amman to find ourselves amongst thousands and thousands of constellations. Masa stood up throug the car’s roof to inhale the cold wind. Ismail and Rob discussed the topics of intellectual grandeur.

I took my medium format with me. It did not perform excellently, but I was able to get some great frames of the stars and play with long exposure and with my wide angle lens. The high ISO allows me to play with black and white in an abstract way. The weather was cold, but nothing that our trained bodies could not handle. We made tea with the firewood we purchased from Amman, and fiddled with our introductory level telescope. The biggest moment of the night was seeing Jupiter through the telescope. You could see the rings of Jupiter, you could feel that it was real. It was there, me staring at Jupiter and Jupiter staring at me. Stars will always and always surprise you and make you think how infinitesimal you are in this world.

I wanted to document the night with a portrait of the four of us who went. Rob, Ismail, Masa, and me. I asked for them to be still for about 40 seconds. It felt like an eternity in the cold, it also felt like a renaissance painting being painted as the large sensor captured the interstellar light it saw through its lens. This will be a legendary photo for me.

The next day, I found myself inspired to read a passage from David Abram and record my reading. I do feel that his writing is valuable to share. We must readjust our understanding and our relationship to nature. We must understand that we are part of this breathing world, not in contrast to it. We are not machines, we are always participating in the exchanges of this world with animals and plants and bugs and microbes.

To those reading this, I hope you find some value in his words.

Several hours later, I woke up to film some friends for their showreel. They are actors and hoping to get more roles. We had fun for the day playing and enjoying the Amman winter sun. The same night we found ourselves with Ismail again and our friend Omar. Conversations between brothers you’ve known for a long time is always valuable.