I turned on the TV to a white screen, and sat back on the couch and just stared at it for about 10 minutes. I noticed the shape of the screen, a rectangle, as compared to the rest of the TV, which is a rectangle but has bezels. The bezels on the sides and top of the screen are the same, but at the bottom, it's thicker. It's disproportionate and weighs the TV down. The corners of the TV are also beveled and rounded and smooth, while the corners of the screen itself come to a sharp corner and don't follow the same rounded, filleted profile. I observe the little light in the bottom right-hand corner of the TV that tells me it's on and matches the same white hue that is displayed on the white screen, somewhat connecting the outside side of the TV to what's on the TV. I started to think of what this TV meant to me. The fact is that I haven't used it a single time since I've been here at college this year, and neither have my roommates. It's been kind of a static decorative piece of our apartment, and I feel like none of us will use it until we have company. What I believe the meaning of this TV is to us, is to share with others, something such as Penn State football. Otherwise, outside of bonding it has little to no use. But it's not the only box for content that we have. I have a phone and iPad, a laptop, and two computer monitors, as do my roommates have many of the same. These boxes of dopamine carry the power to connect, divide, and influence our daily lives. Some more than others. Some we take with us. However, some of these boxes stay stationary and some contain more dopamine than others, depending on the content that is presented on them. We take pictures with them, share and consume, and repeat this cycle over and over again. All this to say that a TV, which started as the first dopamine box, has become somewhat the least used and potentially most connective through in-person shared experiences.

"I discovered that miraculous worlds may reveal themselves to a patient observer, while the casual passerby sees nothing at all."
-Konrad Lorez

This is the quote that stood out to me the most within the article, as it's something that I've learned already. And something that I've developed since being in college and picking up a camera for the first time my freshman year, but I sometimes forget to do it. I get so caught up in my day, or I'm so distracted by the things in my life, even whenever I'm out taking photos with intention, that I forget to slow down. Whether that's because of excitement or other things, I learned that actually stopping for a second, staying in one spot, and observing what's around you results in so many better photos and experience than just wandering around endlessly.

I think it's important for to do this within my daily life as well, even without a camera. And over the last couple of days, I've observed myself taking note of details that I would have previously ignored because of their insignificance. And instead, now trying to make significance from things that I observe that even though they might not be the most visually interesting things, they could be within the viewport of a camera or in the story they may tell.

It's not only the distractions of just life; it's also the distractions of our devices. If you stand on the bus going anywhere, you'll clearly notice that nearly everyone on the bus is on their phone and so invested in the content that they are consuming in their little dopamine boxes. On my travel from the parking lot to class on Monday, I challenged myself to not touch my phone the entire time. I observed every single person get on and off the bus, what they were wearing, the different attributes about them, and their behavior too, most of the time reach for that phone.

One of the bus stops. A girl walks into the bus and sits down diagonal from me on the bus, and I observe something that I found to be out of the ordinary that she had, which is a tattoo spanning the width of the back of her neck. The tattoo is a book opened up with a mountain protruding out of it, and stars and moon sit atop it .There's also an inscription on the top and bottom of the image. I can't really make out what it reads in the cursive font, but I can assume It could potentially biblically or astrology related. You can see this photo pinned to the top of this blog. This is a miraculous world I believe Konrad Lorenz was talking about, not only the fact that this is a small detail within all the other things to be perceived, but also the magical / miraculous world scene the tattoo depicts.

The casual person would not notice the tattoo or take the time to consider its meaning. Even more so for a lot of the things that I photographed for the main assignment, such as textures and imperfections of our environments. And as photographers, I believe it's part of our job to observe things and people that the casual passerby doesn't see and share it, ultimately opening up the eyes of others to perceive their surroundings.