If you’ve been around the internet in the past five years, consideration of what comprises a perfect average day has surfaced as a means of designing one’s day so that key features in one’s day are found and recognized, so that Life-long goals are actualized and so that people recognize and master control over what happens within their days rather than being mere do-bodies, going from bed to work and back again with little awareness of time, values, meaning and effort, all of which are invested in each day. For me, what to do about photography and pursuing each next, best picture has been the question of the day … through many months. Photography is an activity that you make time for, an activity that you fit into your day, an activity that must, in precedence, rank equally to other activities in your day if you’re to find successes with it. It’s about photographing things you like to photograph, things you’re interested in. It’s about photographing things you don’t normally have access to in your day-to-day existence. It’s about capturing unique qualities in your subject that you and others may perhaps never find again. And, it’s about recognizing the beauty in things and photographing them. In Susan Sontag terms photography is about appropriating and making the thing photographed, yours. Photography is not an activity easily engaged in. Often the timeframe from image capture through to print and presentation is a separation of tasks that involves days, weeks, months and as I’m still finding, it may involve years. It is work and it is cumulative work – seeing more and more of what the image can become. It is an endeavor engaged in primarily because the print outcome is reward; what is produced is a kind of manna for the viewer to feast upon. In the subjects photographed, while there are seasons and changes we pass through, what’s also beginning to surface as more photographs are created is the commonality or mean of existence, the fundamentals that we need to live and thrive. And, I note my good fortune in not being fully exposed to lives lived in the absence of these basic ingredients of Life.
The photographs presented here are the other photographs, the b-side images that were not ones selected to tackle consideration of a single theme or idea or subject. What’s interesting, though, is the repetition of what is subject within photographs – it’s beginning to reveal commonality among our human needs.
Listening to Young the Giant’s Cough Syrup, (a second night’s acclimatization to the tune), Ulrich Schnauss’ Passing By (from Elizabethtown Soundtrack – vol. 2), the Propellerheads’ Take California, Tricky’s Hell Is Around the Corner, Supreme Beings of Pleasure’s Strangelove Addiction, Moby’s Porcelain and the Gotan Project’s Santa Maria (Del Buen Ayre).
Quote to Inspire – “Photography, like alcohol, should only be allowed to those who can do without it.” – Walter Sickert
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
Funny how life throws us themes, even when we don’t see it. When I started my blog, it was about the travelling, walking and poetry. It has morphed into different things, it still includes the active idea that started out. But it is more now, and has strong themes that repeat.
Thanks for putting these up.
Jim
Hey there, Jim:
Life does throw us themes … and I think there’s the coincidence of our readiness for them and our development with them. I should throw your way a couple of journaling workshops you can make use of to develop you and those things that you focus on in Life endeavors. Ira Progoff (who’s now passed on) developed something called the Intensive Journaling method. I mention this because the journaling is multi-faceted in its approach developing the art and imagination and intuition that is in any of us that shapes our work.
While Life does throw us themes we also can miss those subtle opportunities for choice that lead us somewhere new; we may be limiting ourselves by way of preference and the way we’ve always done things.
Take care, 🙂
I meant to ask a question of your theme. When I scroll through your images on the rolling window and I click “like” on an individual picture, do you see that as a separate “like” or is it just lumped with the whole post?
Jim
Hey there, Jim:
I’m thinking that the likes tend more to be lumped as a group; there is one photo-blogger, Michelle from She Speaks and Motley News who’s figured out how to establish more than one like within a gallery presentation. For me, the forum dialogue is what all this is about and exposure to other people’s work. With these photoblogs you can really get a good sense of the world’s day and other’s tack on the beauty that they are finding.
Take care, 🙂
Hello again, Jim:
I stand corrected; in looking at the who’s been looking in on posts I am able to tell which photographs you are liking.
🙂
Very well explained, Lumens! Pictures were interesting today. Cough Syrup…sigh. One of my favorites!
I find myself facing similar things. I go out and take some images and pick which ones I will use for my blog, then sometimes weeks or months later I will go back to the image and look to see what I have and find another image that I like. Sometimes I will like that image so much more than any of the others and I have to wonder, why I missed that one. I don’t know the answer to that question, could be a different state of mind who knows. I do love it when that happens though.
Love the quote comparing Photog to an addiction of booze (or anything else, I assume)…..perfect tho.
Hey there, Kharma:
I like the quote because it promotes forward to the technical discipline of photography. While you appropriate visual manna in each photo … you’ve got to be able to walk away, leave it alone when the living of Life needs to take precedence. Still there are those artists who move into the zone of art that ends up hurting them because they extend themselves too, too far into their work, for their work. I’m reminded of Van Gogh in Irving Stone’s book ‘Lust for Life.’ There are our natural rhythms of Life and living that we anchor to.
Take care,