Maybe photography is my alter ego.  A persona I can inhabit.  Something that someone on a Great Lakes freighter, or in a dragster cockpit, or in a tiny apartment in Japan can look at and say, “I wonder what it’s like to be a photographer and to make those pictures.”

It’s a cliché, but maybe photography really is a microcosm for life in that sense – trying to achieve something, being dealt setbacks or even outright failures, and learning to manage through the sting of disappointment and carry on.

Candidly, I don’t know much about Marilyn Monroe, except that she has become a pop icon with a large following to this very day.  From what Iittle I have read about her, she seems to me to give off a bit of an alone in a crowd vibe too.  I don’t know, maybe sometimes alone is better, but it still feels lonely. 

… it does occur to me that my interest in photography is rich, deep, and a space that I inhabit largely by myself, which can be lonely sometimes.

The elements are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and the fascination is exploring all the different ways you can fit them together.  Were Monet’s studies of the cathedral at Rouen repetitious?  Were Van Gogh’s paintings of sunflowers repetitious?  No, of course not…

Do digital photographers make better images than film photographers?  No, of course not.  The quality of an image is down to the skill and talent of the photographer who made it, not the equipment they used.  Still, there is one thing, though…

It’s true, the highlights in the clouds are blown out, there is a lack of detail there.  But it doesn’t bother me at all, and it also doesn’t bother me if it bothers you.  I’m more interested in why it bothers you.

Is it me, or are fewer and fewer photographers using tripods these days?

It’s critical, in my opinion, to invest as much effort in composing the background of an image as is invested in composing the foreground.

If photography is the art of subtraction, then I think my interests are leaning more and more towards less realism in my work.