Three Strange Dogs

I think I need a vacation! I had a dream last night (as happens from time to time) that I was taking pictures. I was at home, but somehow had a high view of a body of water, which my home in life doesn't have. Three strange dogs had entered my house, which for some reason my dogs didn't object to. Their owners were there too, and I tried to use the dogs to make friends with the people, but, even though they were in my house, the people ignored me, corralled their dogs, and left without acknowledging me. I felt a sense of separateness and hurt feelings—but on behalf of my dogs, who need more canine company and were being deprived of it. At that point, through a window, I noticed that a huge, dense black band of stormcloud, moving in from behind me, was about to obscure the sunny day, which you could still see underneath the cloudbank, above the water. I grabbed my camera, but I couldn't open my eyes, so I couldn't see anything in the viewfinder. When I finally pried my eyes open I took several pictures, but no matter how I tried to adjust the exposure the camera overcompensated for the dark cloud and blew out the sunny highlights over the water in the distance. Giving up, I turned my attention to a view inside the house, which had turned into a dank, crumbling basement. In the composition there was a minor element, a small, spherical glass globule like a clear Christmas ornament or unfrosted lightbulb that I wanted to position against a contrasting blotch of sunlit concrete, to make it stand out, but each time I took the picture, the camera's algorithms, with flashing rectangles in the viewfinder and electronic beeps and blips, repositioned the objects in the viewfinder to its liking, spoiling what I was trying to achieve. I tried again and again, moved the camera this way and that, but the camera wouldn't allow me to control the geometry of the arrangement. I didn't know how it was rearranging reality, and worried that maybe I had gotten behind on developments in the tech.

A "frustration dream," then. (Dreams are often reducible to categories.) Is it a bad sign I'm dreaming of camera handling? I watched Anomalisa last night, which is a disorienting experience. Like I say, maybe I need a good long rest in the healthy air and healing waters at some sanitorium somewhere. Like in an old novel. Hello, Dr. Cheswick, Dr. Taber, Dr. Frederickson, Dr. Scanlon—the famous Dr. Scanlon—Mr. Harding, Dr. Bibbitt, Dr. Martini, and Dr. Seefelt.... Maybe it means I think cameras go too far in trying to be helpful? Maybe it just means I should spend more time practicing. Or reading the manual. I hope none of you are psychologists!  :-)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(Not) everything must fade away

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John: "I resisted the impulse to begin deconstructing the dream, knowing that I could not outdo this assessment."

Larry Gebhardt: "Man I hate the 'frustration dreams,' but they are usually at least slightly interesting and the only ones I remember most nights. Some days I feel like I'm stuck in one of them when trying to get a digital camera to do something I know it can, but I just can't remember how to get to the right menu or combination of settings. I've been back shooting film lately and there's something so nice about the simplicity of mechanical cameras with black-and-white negative film. With the Hasselblad it had been several years since I used it, but with just a few options it all came back in an instant. Of course there were film cameras with a multitude of custom settings, AF quirks, etc, but I never really used them extensively. On the other side I've never really found a simple digital camera that I could be sure of the results after letting it sit for a while."

Ernest Zarate: "If you do go to that sanatorium, keep your eyes open for the lead nurse. Rumor has it she can do a real number on your head."

Mike replies: Whew, I'll say. And freedom just required stepping out the open window.

Comments

[Peter Wright]

Didn't you say one time that you have a brother who is a psychologist? Sounds like a good time for a family visit!

[hugh crawford]

The Scheimpflug effect has been emulated by computers, adding the Escher effect is just a few extra lines of code but the U.I. obviously needs some work.

Regarding Drs. Cheswick, Taber, Frederickson, Scanlon Et. Al., maybe you need a bigger boat?

[I think you're mixing up your movie tropes! --Mike]

[hugh crawford]

On closer reading I think your camera came with the Hieronymus Bosch filter enabled. That usually costs a lot extra.

[Mark Kinsman]

This is what happens when you decide to buy something other than more Fuji....you’ve been warned..

[Kristian Wannebo]

Aah, I'd love a camera like that, meaning the second part of the strangeness, but as a second camera - like the kaleidoscopes we played with as kids! For inspiration!

( Where there dogs in any of the museum photos? Just kidding!)

And do have a good rest - with or without a camera in your hand! Rests are good whether you need them or not! (With a camera Robin Wong calls that shutter therapy. :-) .)

[Michael Perini]

Are we really doing Cloud Sourced Dream analysis??
I don’t feel qualified to Help.

[RICHARD .Newman]

Cameras may be doing everything else, but at least until they invent the StarTrek tractor beam, they can't move objects by themselves....at least not yet.

[c.d.embrey]

Maybe it just means that you should take your meds—or maybe stop taking them, some will cause you to hallucinate!

Thanks for the heads-up on Anomalisa. I'll view it tonight.

[Alun J. Carr]

Hmm. Veerry interestink, Mr Johnston. I zink zat eet meanz zat you vant to keel your Vater und sleep mit your Mutter. Ve analysts call it der “Oedipus Complex” after ein dead Greek guy. Und ve analysts are called zat because ve are anal. Zat vill be $200, please. Cash.

[Joe Holmes]

I was talking to my wife and son about something similar just last evening.

There are a few common stress nightmares that many people have in common, including me: the one where you suddenly realize that you've got a final exam in a few minutes and you forgot to go to class all semester.

And if you ever did any kind of acting at any level, you may have had that dream where you're about to go onstage for a performance and you realize that you completely forgot to memorize any of your lines.*

Well I haven't acted or been in school for a long time and I no longer have those dreams. But one nightmare that I do have a few times a year is where I'm walking down the street and suddenly realize that I left my camera bag in some public place, and getting back to that place becomes strangely difficult and complicated. I wake up in a sweat.

I wonder if that's a common dream among photographers.

-----
*I actually cured myself of that acting nightmare once when I decided, within the dream, that it would be okay if I went onstage with a copy of the script in my hand and read my lines. I never had that dream again.

[Mike Ferron]

"but no matter how I tried to adjust the exposure the camera overcompensated for the dark cloud and blew out the sunny highlights over the water in the distance"

Obviously a jump in timelines to early digital days Mike. Things are better now. :)

[Jamie Pillers]

I think you just need to take longer walks with the dogs. Its the cure-all that brings all things back down to earth where they belong. :-)

[Paul Van Slambrouck]

Simple. The three dogs ignoring you are f-stop, shutter speed and ISO, all under auto control, vividly demonstrated when you try and capture an image with manual control.

[John Krumm]

That was funny. Sounds a little like some of my own dreams, especially the crumbling basement. My dreams often have a "falling apart house" element these days. In the last I remember the ceiling was leaking all over the place during a storm (in reality we do have a couple water issues, but not all over). As a child in the seventies and eighties I used to have nuclear war dreams. I'm waiting for my first climate change dream (maybe a leaking roof is a climate change dream).

[john dana]

I've been dealing with a persistent FedEx International delivery problem for a week now, to the point where it really is messing with my serenity.

So today I shared my experience with the umpteenth customer service rep. BTW, they all lie in a vain attempt to placate you, and even admit that they all lie to placate you. I guess it works more often than not.

So I told the rep, at 3:30 AM, that I was having a recurring dream about dying. And in the dream I am lying on a bed in a dark room running out of breath, but in the background I can hear the FedEx hold music playing. The bad news: I'm dying. The good news: I know I have at least 45 minutes to an hour left.

Cheers, John Dana

btw, true story

[Ray Hunter]

Apparent results of your recent dietary experiments, Dr. Johnson

[Paul Martini]

Not on this boat.....
-Dr. Martini

[Donald Zochert]

Everyone’s a psychologist, especially the dogs.

[James]

Last night I also had a dream........

I dreamed I was eating a giant marshmallow that kept getting stuck in my throat.
When I woke up, the pillow was gone!

[MikeR]

Seriously- do you have sleep apnea?

[On the night of that dream, 3.8 events per hour. My CPAP machine records my data and I can access it through an app. --Mike]

[Jim Arthur]

"There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face." ~Ben Williams

Butters should be able to handle this.

[Andrew W]

I’ve just listened to the audiobook “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker, a leading sleep scientist. It won’t explain a particular dream but I think it’s the most important book ever written (yes, really) on physical and mental health. The breadth of the issues covered and their impact on the health of individuals and the whole of society is astounding.

[Old Ramon]

Time to worry about your own dogs then...

[Rob Campbell]

Dreams are sometimes habit: I have had runs of the same one - almost - hitting me quite often, then being replaced by another short series. None of those is a happy one, all hinting at loss and distrust of one thing or another. I even have the occasional dream where I realise I am within a repeat performance.

A quite peaceful one was driving over the edge of a cliff on Lanzarote. No pain, no fear, just oh well, that's it then. The car never did hit anything, the dream just closed down.

For a while I was of the opinion that deams were somehow based on subconscious fears of something, or just revisions of the day's events. I no longer believe that, any more than I believe that anyone else holds a magical key to the interpretation of dreams.

[MikeR]

My CPAP machine is a Philips Respironics Dream Station. A few days ago it recorded a series of events about 10 times my typical rate. My dreams were of the nature of circular non-resolution, which long experience tells me are associated with the "near-death" nature of prolonged oxygen deprivation. Further, I've noticed that the worse the apnea, the more dismal and decaying the environment depicted in the dream/nightmare.

There was a movie some years ago, "Jacob's Ladder," that in parts were so similar to my apnea dreams that I never want to see it again.

I wouldn't read a lot into the dream itself.

[“dependable” hugh crawford]

Regarding the auteur theory discussion and scriptwriters who don’t direct their own work: what about Charlie Kauffman? Or similarly Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor comics (go see the film of the same title if you are unfamiliar, it is the anthesis of a comic book movie to say the least.

Of course in photography there is an example in the work of Cindy Sherman.