Annals of Social Distancing -- June Edition

My faithful 1978 Canon AT1 SLR with its 200mm lens is still following me around the neighborhood on my mostly-daily walk. I'm trying very hard to see things with a 200mm lens but I'm a pretty old dog to learn new tricks. Apart from the somewhat compressed depth this might as well as been through a 50mm.

The kids in the neighborhood are often out on their bikes or skateboards but, to their credit, making a point of not bunching up. I don't know what motivated this fellow to take root at the street corner.

"On Reading" Show Postponed

The planned show of prints from my "On Reading" show at the Edmonds Library coincident with their Writer's Festival has been postponed until 2021. So has the festival.

While I'm sorry about it being postponed it seems like such a good fit I'm willing to wait so that this body of work up as an adjunct to the festival.

If you try to make the work of your heart and don’t quite get there you may feel disappointed – unhappy. If you don’t try to make the work of your heart then you certainly will feel disappointed – unhappy.

I've been thinking a lot about this quotation by David Bayles. Before I settled in to doing the kind of photography that, it seems, is "the work of my heart" I tried still life, landscape, alternative processes, studio portraiture -- and so on. It was only after a few metaphorical dope slaps by Bayles at a weekend workshop called "Finding Your Own Voice" when that fact became clear to me. By then I had been doing photography for 20 years or so and was "disappointed -- unhappy".

Now don't get me wrong! I enjoy and am excited by still lifes, landscpapes, alternative processes, studio portraiture -- and so on. It just that they are not what I want to do for my own work.

What set me to thinking about the Bayles quotation was that I am preparing a talk for a local artists' group about photographer Sabine Weiss, who said: "Photography gave me happiness. I am just a witness of what I see and what interests me, which has always been human beings.”

She, by the way, is 96 and still active in selecting prints and working with editors on books of her photographs. I want to be like her when I grow up.