Last year I had the great pleasure of meeting up with some new friends who I connected with over social media. We went camping, had a good deal of coffee, and some wonderful conversation. Recently, my friend John sent me a text reminding me that it had been almost exactly a year since we did this, and that we might be able to make it happen again at the same time this year, 2021. Shortly after the initial reminder we were able to drum up some plans (as it’s said), and the ball was rolling (as it’s also said). The first week of November came around, I threw a bag of carrots into the car and some daily carry stuff, and headed on up to Kansas City to meet up with my friends.
I am not a man of tradition, normally. What I mean by that is I don’t like doing things merely because of tradition, but I want to have reasons of my own for the things I do. That said, I have next to no experience with making new traditions. This year however, I am able to start saying that I’ve formed a tradition, and one that I take great pleasure in. John, Austin and myself have now succeeded in meeting up and camping two years in a row, and we are looking forward to doing it again next year. Making time for experiences, for places and conversations, for people, is something worth intentionally prioritizing, and that makes it something I am happy to create a tradition around.
Of course we made some photos in our time together, so I’m sharing some of them here on the journal. I hope you enjoy. Also, I hope this post serves as inspiration, to make time for what’s important to you. Life is so full of moments worth appreciating, worth paying attention to as they walk alongside us before passing away into memory. Give thanks for those moments, friend.
love,
— Joel
Geeky Things
Camera: Fuji X-Pro2
Lens: Fuji 35mm f/2
Location: Clinton Lake, KS
Notes: If you thought it ironic that I traveled to Kansas to go camping when I live in Northwest Arkansas, you’d have good reason. However, Clinton Lake and the surrounding area in Lawrence is beautiful, and I am a very big fan of the kind of golden fields one can find there. I went through a few rounds of processing before settling on a look I liked for these images, and (at least for the foreseeable future) this is the last outing I photographed raw — from now on I’m shooting my personal stuff in JPEG. I’ll write more about this another time, but for now suffice it to say that I didn’t feel like being quite as meticulous as usual with these images. They are certainly edited in a different style than is normal for me. But the process was fun, and I’m happy with the results!