Welcome

Following the third year of a holiday letter comprised
of my (increasingly complex) life via a (increasingly complex) year-in-photographs, I
wondered what it would be like to join the great experiment of 365 days of photographs.
I'm not a photographer,
I'm a writer. I'm a visual thinker, and if ever there was proof that a photo is worth a
thousand words, it would be the story a photo tells me, or in this case, about me.
Follow me on this adventure, where I
learn about photography, my ability to record my life, my dedication to something (I've
never been known for doing anything everyday) in my posts. I've also discovered I'm
learning about time, the history of it, and the odd practice of recording it, measuring it,
turning it into something tangible, and I'll record these explorations in the sidebar.
As always, feel free
to say anything. My experiment is not a spectator sport.

July 15, 2009

July 15 2009 Moment versus location

As much as this blog is about writing, it is about the photos. I've noticed there are two main types of photos: one is the preservation of a moment of time, a permanent record of something transient. The other is a photo of something perpetual, a location, a place. I could go back day after day and take the same photo of a particular spot. What makes this second type of shot impressive is the perspective: this is how I see it, a manner instead of a subject. "Look at this thing like I do" it begs.

I remember going to an art show in the gym at my first high school and there was this photographer with a name I remember as being odd in some way, and she took this picture I could not wrap my mind around. It was a pile of rusty nails. "Yeah, so?" I remember thinking. My dad is a carpenter. We had milk jugs with the top carved out so they were open jugs with handles and that's where he accumulated all his nails, and it looked just like rusty nails, just like the picture. So what about it?

So what, then fifteen years has taught me something? No, it isn't the fifteen years that taught me. It is the constant quest for the reason behind the photo of rusty nails. Eventually I learned to appreciate that photograph. She wasn't trying to show me something extraordinary, she just asked me to see it in an extraordinary way.

Thus, join me at looking at the only reserved parking space I'll ever get: as a customer at my bank.



I had the lanyard of my camera looped into my belt and shot this from my hip, which is an odd angle to peer into one's display, there.

Tomorrow's word: rope

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