Ruminator

Photo by: Tim Bindner Today’s post is about relationships. How some are lifelong while others are only there for a short time? This applies to romance, friendship, and even casual relationships with co-workers or neighbors. When people I was close to leave my life, I used to take it to heart. I would blame myself and try to focus on what was wrong with me and why they left. I learned after many years that the issue may have been me, but often was not. I have recently done my own social experiment to test relationships that I have with people. I was the one always reaching out, always calling or texting, and always planning or attempting to plan to get together. In this experiment, I have done the opposite of what I was used to doing. I stopped texting people, stopped reaching out and stopped inviting. All to see who notices and/or sticks around. Through this, I truly learned who wanted to be in my life and who didn’t. However, with age I do not take it personally anymore. Not friends,

Photo by: Tim Bindner Last weekend while having dinner with friends the subject of vacations and planning those vacations came up. Anyone who knows me knows I plan things out, especially vacations, and often very early. I have, however, changed my method and the purpose behind the change. I used to plan every detail as soon as possible about our trips, though often the planned itinerary didn’t come to fruition. I wanted to know when and where we were doing things. My planning has changed. Obviously, I still must plan flights, lodging, location, and sometimes rental cars, but places to visit are not so stringent with me. I make a list of places to go, but now when and if we don’t make it, that is okay with me. The list is a guide. So back to our discussion about planning vacations. My friend Mark once told me to plan things to look forward to. I take that to heart. I try to plan one or two trips a year and a few smaller weekend trips as well. It does so much for my psyche and helps me g

Photo by: Tim Bindner I recently spoke to a friend who was having trouble sleeping. He was suffering from something that I and many people I know suffer from, which is an occasional restless night’s sleep, or in my case a routine restless night’s sleep. It is because of having an active brain. What causes this? I am no expert, but I feel it has a common cause for most people, including myself. I honestly think the reason people struggle to sleep is that most of us are more easily distracted by our worries and fears during the day. During the day we are working, caring for others, indulging in screen time, and moving from one task or chore to the next. There is little time to be aware or focus on our thoughts that trouble us. However, when everything goes dark and quiet at night, we find ourselves alone with our thoughts, and the darker, deeper, more difficult and powerful emotions or worries easily present themselves. As a society, it bombarded us with media, social media, and informat

Photo by: Tim Bindner Last Monday, I spent a few hours traveling the back roads of southern Indiana. I shot almost 50 pictures and had a great time exploring. My friend Amanda had taken us the previous week to see her late grandmother’s house, that was built in 1905. The house was falling apart and would be soon torn down. Amanda wanted me to document via photographs what I could to preserve the memories. Besides forests/woods, trees and clouds, old barns and houses are my favorite things to shoot. The older and more ‘distressed’ the better. I was honored to do this for her. Upon shooting the house and walking around the inside, she then took us down a back road, returning to her place, where I captured a few more shots before returning home. She asked later if “I would like to explore the area some more”? Of course, I did. Fast forward to Monday and we met her at her house at 10am. She offered to drive. Marcie was in the back like ‘Driving Ms. Daisy’ and I rode shotgun. It was 2.5 hou

Photo by: Tim Bindner I am behind on this post but wanted to document my hike on 1.1.23. It was a short hike but had a photographer’s most coveted element. I woke up early on New Year’s Day, grabbed my gear and jumped in my car. It was still dark, and about 20 minutes before sunrise. The time it would take me to get to my destination. As I left my driveway and headed down the road, the fog had moved in, and my visibility was 1/8 th of a mile. Often only about 10-20 feet in front of the hood of my car. Fog and mist are the envy of every photographer, and I was lucky today I would experience some. I drove slower than normal, but made it eventually to O’Bannon Woods State Park. My goal was to take the Fire Tower Trail as far as I could north based on time, then turn around and head back. Marcie and I needed to be somewhere, so I was cognizant of the time. I started my watch and moved down the trail. Normally I see other cars, sometime people, or at a minimum hear cars in the distance. To

Photo by: Tim Bindner My number one photo for 2022 should come as no surprise. It is not technically the best photo I took, but the story and meaning behind the photo make it number one to me. As documented in my THANKSGIVING post, I took this picture while out hiking at Mount Saint Francis. I didn’t realize at the time I was or had a cardiac event. This might have been my last photo taken. Thankfully, it was not. I took this photo at 8:45am with my Fujifilm X-T5 and 27mm lens. I took it with a low f-stop of f /2.8 thus providing only a focus area on the leaves. So why do I like this photo? First, because as mentioned, this will always remind me of what happened that day and the following two days. Next, the leaves remind me of hearts and veins within them. The bottom leaf especially shows some damage and if you look closely, on the bottom right, below the damage, you can see a small ‘vein’ being blocked. Spiritually speaking, there is the light coming in from the top left, shining on