Namaste

I've spent the morning looking through unprocessed files of old shoots in the studio.  It doesn't seem that I have had it so very long, but going through the images almost made me weep.  Lost times.  Early on when the Polaroid was still good and plentiful, I took very few digital pictures.  With some models, I took none at all.  As the inks began to dry up and the film began to be scarce, though, I took more.  I shoot with some models many times and apparently over long periods of time.  There are young girls who wanted to be models for real but time and skinny left them behind so that they didn't want to make pictures any more.  You can never be seventeen again.  There are pictures of models before the many tattoos that were yet to come, fresh skin, fresh eyes.  For some, over time, it is the eyes that tell the tale. Haunted, I kept looking, opening file after file after file.  Images I overlooked now have new meaning.  I will go back and work with them, cook them up and present them.  But when?  When do I find that time?  I feel I'm in that scene in "Fantasia"with the pails and the mops.

There are other things to take pictures of, I know.  I could do still life.  I could photograph landscapes.  I could tackle social issues.  I could make macro-photos of plant parts.  I could take pictures of people's pets, cars, jewelry, broken things. . . .  It can all be beautiful.

But I don't know if all that would have the power one day when I am looking back through the billion images on a new fall day to take my heart and squeeze it 'til it wants to break.

Namaste.