Interesting Things

Cody Schultz

Although it was not until 2014 when I bought my first “professional” camera, I believe a part of me has always loved photography. I remember constantly taking pictures around the house, of my family, of our vacations, and especially of Jazmine, my family’s dog. At first, I had thought that landscape photography was boring, not understanding why someone would want to wait hours on end in a single location, just to end up going home empty-handed. Yet in 2016, I found myself doing exactly that. I found myself going on long hikes with my girlfriend, sweating and panting as we walked up steep hills to various waterfalls, often coming home only to realize that none of the photographs I took were portfolio-worthy. The memories shared, however, made it so much more worthwhile than any photograph ever could. And that, I truly believe, is why landscape photography is so special.

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Unpopular opinion: I don't think your life has to have a purpose, or you a grand ambition; I think it's okay to just wander through life finding interesting things until you die.~ Amber Sparks

Among my least favourite aspects of high school English classes was having to find the deeper meaning in every sentence we read. Heaven forbid the author described something simply as she saw it; the sky was never blue as it is perceived by society. No, it was blue because the author was thinking solemnly about something - her life was not going to plan, and she was depressed. And the way she recalled sitting on the couch, the position she sat in, always had to have some philosophical meaning behind it, rather than just because it was a comfortable place to sit.

Perhaps the same can be said regarding art and, specifically, photography. Now that the craft has had its time to mature over the past two hundred years, we find ourselves wondering what the point of it all is. We begin to ponder whether there is meaning in it or if we are pursuing it for its own sake. Even this series of articles I have been writing, entitled *Finding Meaning*, may be seen as digging a bit too deep, waxing a bit too philosophically, about something which inherently has no meaning, whether that something be art or life.

The quote starting this article made me begin thinking that we, as a species, have long moved past the collective ideologies and toward much deeper thought processes. Yes, philosophers have always pondered the meaning of life since the age of Aristotle and Socrates. Yes, there are still individuals who delve much deeper into these such ponderings. Yet it seems individuals of the modern day have begun wondering, more than ever before, what the meaning of life is. Why is it that we work forty-hour weeks, on the low-end, until we reach old age, only for us to then be "allowed" to enjoy our lives? What sense does it make that we have little choice but to work ourselves to an infirm age performing some action we care little for, to raise a family and put overly expensive food on the table and a lavish roof over our heads and keep up with the Jones’s, though we care even less about the materialistic goods we buy with the money we work so hard for.