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OK I admit it. I’m one of  those hairy-legged, rough-coated, cuss word wielding photographers who happens to be male. The kind that chewed tobacco just so he’d have something to spit when he was talking to the boys. As such I was occasionally viewed by members of the opposite sex, females in other words, of being somewhat coarse, I know, I know, I don’t understand it either, but it has happened. I am constantly amazed by this reaction.

Their main problem, women I mean, seems to be that I don’t have a ‘softer side’, one that has feelings. That I don’t ‘listen’, I listen, I’m listening while I ask them to please move the hell over you’re blocking my shot, and that hurts my feelings. That’s another thing I don’t understand, I have feelings. When I get punched in the face by another photographer because I said something about his ancestry that he didn’t like, I hurt. When I drop a $2000.00 lens on the ground and break it right in two and I don’t know if my insurance premiums are up to date, I feel despair. When I see that another photographer has spit tobacco juice all over my new camera bag, and as I am smacking him as hard as I can with my new $1800.00 graphite and carbon fiber tripod, I get angry. How can they say I don’t have feelings.

This is what causes problems between the sexes, this constant state of ‘failure to communicate’. Cool Hand Luke perfectly epitomized this situation for me when his warden was saying “What we have here is a failure to communicate”. Luke understood, it was the warden that didn’t understand. What Luke was trying to communicate was he just didn’t give a damn. This is something guys understand and relate to completely, and unfortunately it is something that the female side of the equation doesn’t get. It’s just lucky we can breed or otherwise I would fear for the human race.

So as an attempt to offer an olive branch and show that I, and I suspect other male photographers too, have a gentler, softer side if you will, I am presenting this image I made of a flower. I took this after carefully looking around to see if there were any other male photographers in the area, and when there wasn’t I quickly made this photo. I keep it in a folder named ‘Not very interesting stuff shot by mistake’ so if any of the guys are looking in my files they won’t find it. I don’t need that kind of drama right now. I think it totally refutes the argument women have with me of not having any feelings and demonstrates that I am a deeply caring and sensitive individual by nature, and all of you that disagree with that should just back off, know what I mean? I don’t care what you think, I mean I think we can calmly discuss this and arrive at a point where we truly understand each other and can live in harmony. It is kind of a pretty picture isn’t it? I just love the way the dew glistens on the delicately shaded petals…Wait, Did I just say that out loud? Oh man, well maybe just women will read the post today, if not I’ll just say my evil twin brother wrote it, yeah that’ll work.