1 Million Photographs
Plus, a short book review of Angle of Investigation by Michael Connelly
We’ve recently been doing a lot of home renovations, which I have only started to photograph because I forgot. I’m totally not like Marie Kondo, who advises to hold a photograph in your hand and memorize its importance. (Or some other jargon such as this.)
Photographs are concrete. Maybe it’s because I don’t have to, but I think throwing out a photograph is sacrilegious. They take up no space, unless you count space on your cloud storage.
I’m currently in a “stagnant” period of my life. These are the times of your life where the things around you change in infinitesimally small increments, so you don’t notice them. It’s only later … usually on The Husband’s Facebook timeline feed … that I see that, yes, we actually did change.
And it’s only then do I realize that I should have taken more photos.
That’s the power of a photograph. A memory. Evidence of a moment in time. And now that we live in the digital age, evidence that is hard to erase.
But you might ask me … why 1 million photographs? Because I determined that was a “rich life.” Rather than measuring my life through money, e.g. 1 million dollars (queue Austin Powers here), I decided to measure it in individual moments captured on (digital) film.
It’s also one of those lofty goals that I might never achieve. But, maybe I can shoot for the stars, but aim for the moon.
As we approach New Year’s, it helps to take a few moment to reflect on my achievements over the past year. How many moments did I capture? How many more can I remember? How many of those 1 million did I achieve?
Let me know if you, too, count your life in the number of photos that you take. How many have you taken so far?
The Promos
Point of No Return by B.P. Stevens is on the Kindle right now. From the Amazon page:
Weeks later when the charred body of a female is discovered, the Carter family is left to implode from guilt and tension. Faced with a fruitless police investigation, Mason decides to take matters into his own hands. He soon finds himself thrust waist-deep into long-kept secrets that alter his outlook on the world he thought he knew.
Hash Browns and Homicide is free when you sign up for Kate McSpade’s mailing list. From the book page:
When three dirty cops are suspected of a crime, Piper finds herself going undercover to get intel to put them behind bars.
A Short Book Review of Angle of Investigation by Michael Connelly
Angle of Investigation is a Harry Bosch collection of short stories. I give this set 4 out of 5 stars.
From the Amazon page:
In "Christmas Even," the case of a burglar killed in mid-heist leads Bosch to retrace a link to his past. In "Father's Day," Bosch investigates a young boy's seemingly accidental death and confronts his own fears as a father. In "Angle of Investigation," Bosch delves into one of the first homicides he ever worked back as a uniformed rookie patrolman, a case that was left unsolved for decades.
The best out of the three stories is “Christmas Even,” which is where Bosch finds a saxophone that used to be owned by Sugar Ray, a jazz musician. For Bosch fans, we know that Harry loves himself some jazz. So finding a sax owned by one of his idols is a real treat. This story is more about jazz and less about the circumstances of solving a mystery (which Bosch also does) or about the police procedure. The one thing that I disliked is that Bosch is able to take the sax … he basically steals it, albeit it is a stolen sax in the first place. But I didn’t like how he broke police procedure to acquire it.
The next story, “Father’s Day” is about a homicide that Bosch needs to solve on Father’s Day. He needs to confront that fact that he sucks as a father, although maybe not as badly as the man he arrests. I’m not a big fan of “let’s catch the killer by confession",” even though 95% (this is totally my own opinion without any scientific fact whatsoever) of crimes are “solved” by confession.
In “Angle of Investigation,” Bosch fans revisit the first crime that Bosch “investigates” when he is a boot (a newbie cop). It’s of course a homicide, and he is able to magically figure out who killed the poor woman and her pup just with a few phone calls. Never mind that it sat in Open-Unsolved for a few decades. Anyway, I like this one the least because it had a predictable ending.
Happenings
I am taking next week off, so Merry Christmas (Happy Holidays, if you prefer) to all of my readers. Stay safe, and may your holiday be filled with joy and lots of photographs.
Here is “Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon” by Pop Smoke.