Reason Enough

This first two weeks in 2009 have been a time to rethink what I am doing with photography.

Words were my first love. This has never wavered. I grafted images to this first love to make a circle next to the square, never to supplant it. Yet there is only so much time, and navigating what remains of time I have to use is getting treacherous—dangerous and tricky.

My professional photos have all so far been of handsome and beautiful people. I can't think that I want to stop shooting fashion-type photographs. I do want to expand my repertoire and explore the subtleties of light, composition and digital post-production. In a sense, the work of aesthetic development is still ahead!

One day last week, while trying to reduce the stuff clogging up my study, I read my journal entries from 1984. I could hardly put the thick binder down. The account was fascinating. The themes, true, are the same as always but I was amazed at how much I had forgotten of what I have done.

Yesterday, on my off day (off from the regimen I've prescribed for myself), I read British writer, Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy's biography of Alfred Kinsey. The book gave me added reasons for working on my own life story. I didn't think I had a subject to write about or a strong enough reason for writing. Wrong. I already have both.