"Don't Tread On Me"

When someone just has it right there is no need to say more but, there is a need to spread the word.

When everything is so wrong.

The bokeh is unappealing, camera flare unfocused, not to mention that the highlights are blown away and the main subject, for all intents and purposes, is not even in focus.

Ok, enough of the techie crap. I remember a day when I started photographing and would have hurled this slide straight to the garbage, as it did not live up to my standard and quest to create the "PERFECT IMAGE". At that time I was still learning the process of understanding and manipulating the aperture, the shutter speed the composition, many times feeling failure as I fell victim to "THE LIGHT" "THE TIME OF DAY" etc... and so on. Today, I cherish the moments that exist out of the relm, beyond perfect light and outside the "SET OF RULES". This is an image that just falls into its own as is. A moment that Holga users and alternative process people may appreciate capturing, Without having to use old film, antique cameras, plastic lenses or post process photoshop techniques. This image just is and today I was lucky, even in the harsh light of afternoon I feel that I pulled a gem.

Shot with a 5 megapixel digital range finder, this image will stay in my collection,
and as I am thankful for time and age, I see, that my onward quest to make that one image and moment that takes my breath away, is becoming a collection of many images that may quite honestly be bringing me full circle.

Can photography de-volve?

As photographers we all struggle to gain control over light, exposure, and composition all on a never ending quest to make the perfect image...in the end, only being truly happy with those little honest mistakes that just seem to claim themselves as art (thank God you were the one that released the shutter) and we are then comforted in our egos by the effort put forth in getting us to that mistake. In my own photography I am still not sure, depending on whose gauge you are marking by, if I have ever accomplished the goals we all have drilled into our heads individually and collectively by critics, peers and institutions.

Overtime, in this pursuit of creating perfect imagery, I have studied thousands and thousands of images made by hundreds of photographers, some as spectacular as Anne Leibovitz, just to throw out a respected name, others as common as my neighbors brothers son who just received his first camera for Christmas, in all, I have found my personal vision of "GOLD". In a return to my own images, I have found that my accomplishment has become personalized by the pastures I can look back upon. By that I mean, it seems that time has brought me to a place where recollection of the work I have created has instilled a certain level of familiarity both in my ability to photograph and with what I have accomplished with a camera, in turn, this has granted me the ability to move forward in the work that I, for so long now, feel the need to pursue. It is also at this point that I feel completely full, a Thanksgiving dinner type full, where you say you will never eat again yet, you know inside that, in a matter of hours…your hunger will again return. This fullness, as it relates to your need to photograph, is a type of boredom spiced with the flavor of quest; with all food metaphors aside, this quest is a need to create more images in the hopes of finding a new direction, thus a return to the never ending pursuit in making the perfect image.

Currently I am full with trying to gain any more control over photographic images, meaning I want my next subject to "JUST BE" in the image as it would be in its visual surroundings.

I am full of trying to control the light of my next subject; I want the light to "JUST FALL" onto the frame with all its burnt highlights and black shadows accepted as they are.

I am full of deciding if an image is better portrayed in black and white or in color, though I will still make a call, I want the color to "JUST FLOP" onto the frame as it is in its moment of being, never caring if it is too harsh, too pastel or just rich enough to make it an image to someone else's eyes.

I guess you could also say...I have hit a wall, a dry spell or a writers block if you will.

To my general mood while writing this I'd have to say..."The image that goes along with this article sums it up best...until I break the block".