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Several years ago, when this site was popular enough to garner the occasional mention in photo-related publications, I decided to set up a Google alert for my own name. Silly? Probably. Self-absorbed? Most decidedly. But it was an effortless way to keep an eye on my online image — just in case something I photographed or wrote went inexplicably viral.

While a few posts did unleash some minor epidemics, my natural contrarianism insured none of them graduated into a full-scale pandemic. Eventually, as my popularity waned, the Google alerts became less about me and more about other unfortunate dudes who just happened to share my name.

At this point, had I any sense, I would have cancelled the Google alert. But no. I didn’t. I couldn’t. There’s just something so disturbingly irresistible about getting alerted to news stories that look like they’re about you, but aren’t.

Your name is all over that thing. Someone’s quoting you; arresting you; interviewing you; eulogizing you. Only it’s not you. It’s downright creepy. It’s as if there are parallel universes in which you’re living parallel lives, but thanks to the butterfly effect, your paths have diverged so substantially that only your name links you across worlds.

Recently, for example, one of my namesakes was praised in his city’s local paper for inviting a young boy to sit beside him while he played organ in church — even allowing the child to press a prescribed key at certain times during the performance! It was a news story without even the slightest hint of newsworthiness — the sort of reporting that’s so fluffy it makes dryer lint jealous. And yet I was riveted! Bizarro me, it turns out, is a musician too! And he’s interested in sharing what he knows with others! Attaboy, organ me! Apparently, not every butterfly impacts every event equally.

A couple months ago, I read about another of my doppelnamens who got ticked off, and took a sledgehammer to 12 police cars in a parking lot. Not that I’m condoning this sort of thing, but I must admit to having felt a modicum of pride at getting to “stick it to the man” without actually compromising my own spotless criminal record or moral code. I did, however, find myself somewhat mystified by the fact that my namesake caused only $4900 worth of damage. $4900?! With a parking lot full of cars and a sledgehammer in hand? “The real me,” I thought, “would have easily hammered his way north of $10,000!”

More often than not though, news of my doppelnamens is purely pedestrian and utterly banal. I’ve retired. Or I’ve been appointed chair of some horrifically boring committee. Or I’ve died. I do find the obituaries particularly unsettling — especially when the doppelnamen is the same age as I am.

I’ll be the first to admit that such behavior might just be a teensy-weensy bit voyeuristic. But I figure it’s nowhere near as bad as those people who stalk old friends and lovers on Facebook. At least I’m only creeping on myself… well, sort of…

I wonder though — have my namesakes also enabled Google alerts? And if so, how many of them saw some photograph I’d taken, listened to some song I’d written, or read some twisted essay about folding time or celebrating National Biplane Lady Day, and then panic-called friends and family members to assure them it wasn’t he who was responsible!

Life in the 21st Century. A little to love; a little to loathe… but oh so entertaining.

Maybe you’re searching for a coven of witches to put a hex on that obnoxious coworker who habitually steals your lunch from the office fridge. Or perhaps you need the services of a professional cleaner to, um, tidy up that little disagreement that turned a bit uglier than anticipated. Or maybe it’s something simply as innocent as wanting to chill out in San Sebastián for a couple of weeks without damaging your own credit rating.

Where do you turn?

The dark web.

At least that’s what I’ve learned from streaming perhaps a few too many Scandinavian Noirs and other assorted European crime series.

So just how the heck do I get on the dark web? If all these television shows are to be believed (and why wouldn’t they be?), it seems everyone on earth knows the secret handshake except me.

I’m reasonably certain that step 1 is to get myself a decent VPN to obscure both my identity and my location. Most Canadians did just that back when it was possible to trick Netflix into streaming U.S. content north of the border. Alas, I was so awash in the aforementioned Scandinavian Noir crime thrillers that I had no interest in American content. So I’m already behind the curve.

I reckon too that I’ll need a browser that’s perhaps a bit more ‘specialized’ than Safari. Google Chrome maybe? And I’ll obviously want some Bitcoins or other cryptocurrency to pay for my nefarious purchases. Actually, come to think of it, Kodak has recently entered the cryptocurrency game. So maybe I’ll just buy a few kodacoins next time I visit the local camera store for another brick of Tri-X.

Beyond that? I’m not sure what to do.

Mind you, I’m not actually looking to put a hex on anybody — though I will reluctantly admit that my dating prospects are so abysmal that I‘ve recently moved “witches” from the ‘unacceptable companions’ list to the ‘acceptable’ list.

No, the reason I want to get on the dark web is that I’m fairly sure it’s where most of the ULTRAsomething readers are. It must be, ’cause there certainly aren’t many visiting this site on the “light web” any more. And since I’m nothing if not a servant to my readers, how can I obey without knowing which content they find most engaging? What photos do they like? What music? What articles? Are people praising me on the dark forums or bashing me? Sure, I’ve received my fair share of vitriol on the light web, and I couldn’t care less. But dark web vitriol? I mean, you know, they’ve got assassins!

So obviously, accessing the dark web is imperative. But until I gain the necessary knowledge to do so, I’m erring on the side of caution — guessing what sort of content its dark denizens prefer; and publishing only content of that sort. It’s a decision that might just save my life. And if it happens to increase my odds of bewitchment? Well, that’s what I’d call a ‘win-win.’

The world abhors disorder and embraces equilibrium. Yins need yangs. Dogs need cats. It’s the whole “for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction” thing. Or as I like to think of it, “there are people who suck and people who blow.”

Curiously, most folks consider these to be one and the same. In the common vernacular, saying “ULTRAsomething sucks” is perceived as having the same meaning as saying, “ULTRAsomething blows.” But here’s the thing — I only agree with one of those statements.

It’s curious that sucking and blowing have become synonyms, since one obviously involves inhalation and one exhalation. Physically, we all do both — equilibrium. But metaphorically, we tend to favour one over the other.

Personally, I much prefer people who blow to people who suck. People who suck consume more of the world’s energy, creativity, knowledge and compassion than they replenish. We all know people whose very existence drains us of our own vitality, and who reduce our stockpile of enthusiasm to levels barely adequate to sustain an evening of Netflix binging. Soul vampires.

We also all know people from whom new ideas flow easily; whose presence energizes the room or whose generosity is above reproach. Soul nourishers.

The reality, of course, is that we all suck a little and we all blow a little. But there are very few people who do this in equilibrium. Rather, equilibrium is achieved on a global macrocosmic level — where society, as a whole, manages to both suck and blow in proportion.

I definitely strive to be someone who blows. Granted, I don’t blow anywhere near as demonstratively as a Mother Teresa or a Ghandi. But then, to compensate for my moderate blow levels, I do try to subsist on the most minuscule quantities of suck.

And that’s why I’m perfectly fine with the notion that ULTRAsomething blows — after all, it has no real purpose other than to hopefully inspire others to blow. Its mission is to give a (very) little something to this world — to improve it in some microscopic way; to advance society by a nano-nudge.

So a tip of my hat and a hearty and heartfelt “thanks for noticing” to all those readers who, for all these years, have proclaimed that ULTRAsomething blows. And to all those who have suggested ULTRAsomething sucks? All I can say is “your ignorance is showing.”

Hunt. Fish. Farm. Prior to the industrial age, these were basically the only choices available to a hungry human hoping to fulfill their daily caloric needs.

But times change, and for the majority of today’s first-world burghers, it’s take-out, vending machine and frozen food aisle that top the list of options to sate a rumbling belly. Industrialized sustenance might offer the advantage of convenience, but I would posit that a blackberry plucked fresh from the vine is infinitely more satisfying than a blackberry-flavoured popsicle dropped from the lunchroom vending machine.

In case you’re wondering — no, I haven’t just rebranded ULTRAsomething as a foodie blog. I’m still writing about photography — I’m just indulging in metaphors again.

Take-out, vending machine and frozen food aisle are stand-ins for Photoshop, Affinity Photo and PaintShop Pro — three popular options for the modern photographer looking for “likes” in these dog-eat-dog days of social media. And while these options might indeed yield images as quickly and conveniently as a popsicle from a vending machine, they are equally void of nutritional value. So as long as I’m on my positing pedestal, I’ll also declare that a naturally compelling photo is infinitely more satisfying than one which tries to manufacture its charisma through extensive software manipulation.

So what about hunt, fish and farm? For what photographic techniques are these terms a substitute? I would suggest that the photographic equivalent for these words are: hunt, fish and farm. Which makes this perhaps the lamest metaphor I’ve ever crafted.

But even if you’ve succumbed to the seductive allure of altering your photos through illustration and collage, you still need to gather the raw ingredients — some assemblage of pixels with which to begin. And where do you get those pixels? You hunt, fish or farm for them.

Hunting for photos is what I do. It involves hitting the streets with nothing more than a small camera and a pocket full of hope. Hunters have no idea what their cameras will shoot that day — if anything. A successful hunt could feed your ego for months, while a string of unsuccessful hunts leaves you enervated and desperate. Hunters never stop moving. Fast shutters and good shoes are key. Hunters are always searching; always scanning the immediate surroundings for something — anything that might look tasty in a frame. I think of Daido Moriyama stalking the streets of Shinjuku. Or Josef Koudelka, who seemingly travels 100,000 kilometers per published photograph.

Go to any “street photography” class, and you’ll inevitably find it taught by a fisherman. Fishermen prefer to locate areas ripe with potential photo opportunities, and then cast a net. Fishing might mean attending events, parties or celebrations because you know you’ll be going home with something in your camera. Or fishing might mean locating the most intriguing geometric spot in the neighbourhood, and then waiting patiently for something to happen within it. Most of the great photojournalists or documentary-style photographers are fishermen, and why not? Fishing produces a steadier stream of photos than the ‘feast or famine’ nature of hunting, and it’s a lot less stressful. I think of Henri Cartier-Bresson as the consummate fisherman. Or Lee Friedlander for those of us with more esoteric tastes. Fishermen possess patience. I do not. 7 seconds is roughly the maximum amount of time I can stand still and wait for a photo opportunity to materialize before pounding more pavement.

Farming is what most photographers do if they want an actual income. Growing your own photos in a studio or under a controlled environment is a lot less risky than wandering around aimlessly with a camera, or spending hours hunkered down over some little spot you’re fishing that day. Farmers grow their own photos from the seeds of an idea, rather than relying on chance encounters in nature. Motion blur, focus errors and lighting challenges disappear. There’s no such thing as a missed shot. My photographic journey actually began with farming, and I may yet choose to till a little corner of the condo should the hunting prove too lean. Farming might lack the thrill of the hunt, but you’ll never be lacking for portfolio fodder. Most photographers with names known to the general public qualify as farmers: Richard Avedon; Annie Leibovitz; Helmut Newton. But for me, Frantisek Drtikol is the one who first got me interested in farming, and his shapes, tones and shadows still fertilize my imagination to this day.

Some of you may wonder why this metaphorical list neglects other nutriment-satisfying activities, like ranching, foraging or trapping. The reason, of course, is that ranching is just farming for carnivores; foraging is simply hunting for vegetarians; and trapping is fishing for non-pescatarians. In the end, if we want to satisfy our hunger for images, we all must first become hunters, fishermen or farmers — even if our ultimate goal is only another popsicle for our Instagram feed.

So what feeds your photography? Are you a farmer who pursues photography with the same creative vision and aesthetic refinement that motivates painters, sculptors and other studio-based artists? Or are you a healthy and well-balanced fisherman who effortlessly merges life and friendship with an appreciative eye and a passion for photography? Or maybe you’re like me — a hunter seduced by the unknown, obsessed with the chase, riddled with uncertainty, yet nourished by photographic possibilities deemed unpalatable to many?

I’ve taken some rather mediocre photos this past week, and I’m absolutely thrilled. The reason for this seemingly incongruous declaration is that, nestled within it, is an implication that I’m indeed taking pictures — something that hadn’t really happened in the six months prior.

OK, that’s not quite true. I did photograph several labels inside Ikea so I could later retrieve those items from the warehouse. And yeah, I took numerous shots of my flooded condo — on two separate occasions actually — courtesy of a neighbour whose love of long showers is matched only by his disdain for shower curtains. But other than that? Zip.

That’s not to say I didn’t want to take photos. Although I’d slightly relaxed my pathological need to grab a camera every time I stepped outside the condo, I still carried one more often than not. The motivation remained, but the vision had vanished.

When the International Leica Society kidnapped me last year — detaining me until I had acquiesced to their demand for “five photography tips” — I stated on camera that “my only real tip for people is that they just try to find themselves somewhere out there, and then take a picture of that.”

It wasn’t exactly profound. After all, ULTRAsomething exists primarily as an exercise to see how many ways, and for how many years, I can continue to express this identical sentiment. So you’d think I’d be capable of following my own advice. Apparently not. Because what I discovered, after much soul searching, is that I’d spent the past six months looking for photographs of who I was, and not of who I’d become.

The fact is, everyone changes. Nothing is static. That hairstyle that flattered you in 1987 probably doesn’t do so today. Sometimes the changes are gradual, and sometimes they’re sudden. For me, this has been one of those sudden years — a year of loss; a year of change; a year in which external forces have altered the very landscape of my Egorness.

There are holes where there was once life; holes where there was once hope; holes in dreams; holes in reality; holes within holes. I am, shall we say, a bit more melancholy. Often, where I would once see a photo, I would now see only another hole.

And so it occurred to me. If holes are what I see and holes are who I am, then shouldn’t I be photographing holes? Why keep shopping for allegorical curios when you no longer own a metaphorical shelf to display them?

So I abandoned my search for baubles, and began to focus on holes — specifically holes that prevent wholes. And naturally, because I was once again photographing myself, I began to see holes everywhere. I’ll be the first to admit that these are not the most compelling photos to have emerged from my camera — but they are the first to have emerged in many months. At one week into my career as a hole photographer, I’m still too new to even be a noob.

We are rarely who we were, and we are not now who we will likely be. We are only who we are, right this second. Who we are is what we see, and what we see is what we can most easily and effectively photograph. So go photograph it.

I’m a man whose communication style leans heavily on metaphor, irreverent observation, and a trippingly jaunty sardonic panache. It’s a technique best suited for face-to-face interactions, where my body language and facial expressions help unlock my carefully coded words. Without benefit of these visual cues, phone chats can sometimes be a bit dicey, but at least I have the element of ‘inflection’ on my side. That, and the fact phone conversations are exactly that — conversations. Meaning any disconnects can be swiftly identified and rectified.

The potential for misunderstanding increased substantially in the early 1990’s with the arrival of an entirely new form of communication: email. Unlike traditional conversations, email interactions did not occur in realtime. One would type a statement, then wait about 15 minutes for their USRobotics 9600 baud modem to grind out a connection and transmit the message to its intended recipient — a recipient who, more likely than not, wouldn’t be online until sometime later in the week. In 1992, it could take a month just to make dinner plans.

It was beneath the dimly lit dawn of this nascent new technology that I first realized my communication M.O. was indubitably problematic. The written word did not communicate body language. It knew nothing of inflection and was, by design, a medium made for monologues. Sardonicism and metaphor are perfectly detectable in long-form writings, but email was designed for pithiness. And pithiness demands the sort of ordinary unambiguity that bores me silly.

So in 1993, I typed my first emoticon: the “winky face.”

It looked ridiculous to me — as if a violent sneeze had triggered an involuntary finger twitch in the middle of my typing. But its meaning was almost instantly understood by the recipient. It was visual intonation; textual body language. Without this funky bit of punctuation, my wryness was constantly mistaken for wrongness. And so the winky face became one of the most powerful weapons in my punctuation arsenal — exceeded only by my obsessive love for the em dash.

Curiously, I’m not really big on actual winking. I estimate I’ve winked a total of 20 times in my life. Tops. So what I really wished for was an emoticon that more closely approximated the physical expression I made when letting loose with some obscure utterance: a sort of cockeyed smirk. But, try as I might, typing :-/ only served to further confuse anyone reading my emails. So the winky face remained.

Over time, I grew to detest the winky face. I began to hate myself every time I typed it. It looked unprofessional; undignified; juvenile. But every time I decided to eradicate it from my emails, the old misunderstandings returned. I tried to eliminate all need for the winky face by crafting lengthier emails that built enough infrastructure and foundation to convey the mail’s intended mood and spirit. But humans were too busy and their attention span too limited for this to succeed. I even tried dabbling in the art of forthright, metaphor-free communications — but that was just anathema to my soul, which culminated in more self-loathing than if I had simply employed the winky face.

Email proved to be just the tip of a cultural iceberg, and the 21st century has given us all manner of new communication refinements. Emails grew even pithier, begetting Twitter. Emoticons grew cuter and far more numerous, begetting emojis.

Oh, great — thought farts and pictograms. It’s almost as if we’ve turned our back on everything that’s happened to written communication in the 4,000 years since the birth of the abjad. We’re cavemen again. We’re just guys named Ogg tagging a wall with some quasi-representational facsimile of a buffalo so Mrs. Ogg can see what we ate for lunch.

But maybe that’s not it at all. Maybe we’re not regressing. Maybe we’re just correcting a misstep in the evolution of human communications. Maybe pictographs were the right direction all along. After all, plenty of written languages have their foundation in symbols, rather than syllabaries or segmental scripts.

But even symbol-based languages have, over time, seen their pictograms simplified, stylized and bastardized until they’re no longer recognizable to anyone who hasn’t received academic training in their interpretation. We’ve reached a point at which there are now nearly 4,000 different written languages in the world. How many can the average human learn in a lifetime? How does this promote communication?

But emojis? They’re universal. A barfing guy in Russia is a barfing guy in China, who’s still a barfing guy in America. Barfing is universal. But the written word for barfing is not.

Every time I type a winky face at the end of a sentence, I feel as if the written word has failed me — that it wasn’t designed for folks who, like me, prefer to communicate in riddles. Perhaps this is why I got involved with photography — it speaks to my need to communicate in metaphor, but it does so pictorially. Photography is language — but it has nothing to do with the written word. For all intents and purposes, a photograph is nothing more than an elaborate and complex emoji. And that’s the way I use it. To communicate in the cryptically enigmatic manner that I have long favored.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that emojis are a good thing… if it weren’t for that fact that we’re already killing them.

Once again, we humans can’t help but mess up something good. We’ve set emojis on the same trajectory that doomed all those other pictographic languages — we’ve allowed different entities to stylize them and obfuscate their meaning. For example, look at this link to the various “smirking face” emojis.

What do you see? You see an emoji interpreted so freely that its intended meaning is no longer clear. So while the Apple, LG and HTC representations look exactly like a smirk, Google and Microsoft have stylized theirs to the point of resembling an emoji for “remembers a pleasant thought.” And Samsung’s interpretation clearly indicates “contentment” to my eyes. Smirkiness? I don’t see it.

So here we are — another promising technological advancement in universal communication turned into just another tool with the power to confuse. We’re now 25 years into the smiley>emoticon>emoji arc and I still can’t drop a simple smirk into an email, because someone reading it on a Samsung device will surely misread its intention.

Frankly, it’s enough to make me want to just quit writing altogether.

Humans are quirky critters — each of us an individual ingot of doubt, wrapped in superstition, packed in misconception, and encased in myth. Although this could be the opening sentence to any number of articles on any number of human foibles, this particular one is about mankind’s inveterate fear of failure.

Humans fear failure because we fear being embarrassed, ridiculed or ostracized. And so, to avoid such perceived indignities, we compromise our potential by limiting our reach to those goals most easily grasped.

Curiously, because I’m either sub- or super-human (depending on who you ask), I’ve somehow skirted the whole “fear of failure” thing. In fact, I embrace failure. Failure, I’ve always surmised, is merely a necessary step on the path to success.

“An achievement that’s void of failure is no achievement at all.” Since you’re welcome to quote me on that, I’ve included the necessary punctuation for your convenience. If one has never failed in their pursuit of an intent, then perhaps that intent isn’t all it (or you) could have been.

Striving for that which is just beyond our reach forces us — by the very metaphor I’ve employed — to grow.

There is, however, a downside to fearlessly facing failure: if you do it often enough and for long enough, then you begin to accept it. When everything you reach for results in failure and your goals are never achieved, then you haven’t grown at all — you’ve stagnated. Those who at least strive for easily attainable goals have some forward momentum. But those of us who shoot for greatness and fail relentlessly have none.

Lately, I’ve started to realize that ULTRAsomething might just reflect this very condition. It is, by all traditional measures, a colossal failure. On a personal level, it failed in its mission to secure me employment as a writer, photographer, or composer. In the altruistic realm, it failed to have any global impact on modern photography’s steady descent into the mire of verisimilitude — where the literal and idealistic routinely and regrettably trump the metaphorical and poetic.

For all intents and purposes, this site is dead. And yet, like a reanimated corpse, it lurches forward — another article; another set of photos — beamed into space to bounce around the satellites like so much space noise.

So why, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, do I have this nagging belief that ULTRAsomething is actually succeeding at something? Perhaps it’s because I don’t feel the sort of complacency that stems from an acceptance of failure. Nor do I believe I’ve stagnated — though I am metamorphosing into something still too pupal to identify. So maybe ULTRAsomething has failed only at being what I intended, while its real triumph lies in being something other than that. Of course, if that’s the case, then my real failure is in recognizing what, exactly, that something is.

So I blunder on — like some sort of zombie — singularly focused on my quest for brains, brains and more brains. Because without more brains, the true purpose of ULTRAsomething might forever elude me.

As discussed in Part 1, I am a connoisseur of the mundane. Mundanity is where one finds a subject’s essence — its personality, soul and individuality. The artifice of spectacle has little capacity to surprise and delight. But the humility at its periphery comprises all that is life. Within the mundane lies the fragments of every story yet to be told.

Not surprisingly, the discoveries excavated by an observer of the mundane are often interesting only to other mundanologists. I liken my skill to an anthropologist sifting through acres of sand in search of a single bone fragment. To most, the results seem unworthy of the effort. But to the anthropologist and their peers, it’s another piece in the puzzle of life; another key to another door of greater understanding. Sadly, unlike anthropologists, there are no university grants bestowed upon mundanologists. Our toils in the fragmentary riches of life are void of financial reward or social acceptance. In fact, so unappreciated is our work, that I had to neologize the word, “mundanologist.”

Part of the blame falls on errant colloquialism — society’s seemingly universal misunderstanding of the definition of mundane. Heck, even the editors of thesaurus.com got it wrong. If you visit that site and enter the word “mundane,” the first synonym they hit you with is “banal.” Which is downright crazy. Because, to a mundanologist, banality is the antonym of mundanity.

The more highly-evolved Merriam-Webster dictionary defines mundane as “of, relating to, or characteristic of the world.” That pretty much supports what I said back in the opening paragraph — that mundanity is where one finds a subject’s essence; its personality, soul and individuality. In other words, its “characteristics.” Look up “banal” in Merrian-Webster and you’ll see it defined as “lacking originality, freshness, or novelty.” Yup. That’s pretty much the exact opposite of the meaning of mundane, since it implies a homogeny that’s totally at odds with the idea of character. For me, “banal” results from pomp and spectacle — events manufactured precisely for the purpose of encouraging homogeny. It’s only when homogeny is removed that a subject’s true character is seen.

But little by little, over the past several years, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to uncover those moments of sublime mundanity. All the little “tells” and all the quiet moments that define the heart of humanity are being absorbed into the glowing glass screen of the smart phone.

Mundanity still exists. But it has become privatized — a secret conversation between human and smart phone. Because of this, my techniques for observing and recording the mundane have become obsolete. Physical manifestation of the mundane has diminished significantly as humanity now engages with it through these ubiquitous and indistinguishable portals.

Mundanity, which was once on display for anyone curious enough to observe, is now hidden within the banality of conformity. All one witnesses is a sea of humans — totally removed from their environment; heads down, noses to the phone; oblivious, withdrawn, and utterly self-absorbed.

So what is a certified mundanologist to do? How does one go about photographing that which is now hidden? I wish I knew. Perhaps mundanity can be synthesized — created through artificial circumstances in some sort of “lab environment.” Maybe this involves moving my photographic efforts back into the studio? Maybe it means manipulating my environment to force mundanity away from the smart phone? Maybe it means I move on to photographing mundanity in a species without opposable thumbs — I don’t know. All I do know is that my photographic forte is accelerating toward extinction. What lies beyond is still a mystery.