A Weird Place

Hi. Sorry I’ve been away. I have gotten many emails wishing me well and making sure everything is OK. Some I have answered, some I haven’t, all have been read. I am so appreciative of every one of them. Those that know me well, know that I sometimes go MIA. It’s not my intention to worry people, but it is an inevitable by product. My apologies.

I have been in a weird place for the last month. I thought it was because of winter. I thought it was because I have taken pictures of everything that you could take pictures of. I thought it was because I was a hack who wanted to be a photographer so badly that I never realized how awful my stuff was, until now. I thought a lot of things. I completely lost all of my inspiration and all of my desire to even pick up my camera.

For the first time since I bought my D50 years ago I stopped taking my camera to work. I just didn’t want to anymore. I wasn’t using it and it was just taking up space. While I didn’t want to take it with me anymore, I wondered “Is this it? Did I outgrow this hobby now? Am I going to move on to something else?” I found myself exhausted at the thought of lugging my camera out and having to push the shutter.

I have recently started to concentrate on my kid photography. I still love it but I wondered if I had turned it into work. If I had ruined the one thing that I loved. The one thing that allowed me a release. The one thing that felt right to me. I don’t think that was it, though it had something to do with it. I think I made my brain believe that I shouldn’t be taking pictures of ANYTHING but kids.

Without my camera in my hand, I have become irritable. I have been a little depressed. Edgy. While the kid thing is part of it, I am a bigger part. I am very busy. Busy doing a whole lot of nothing. Busy on Facebook. Busy checking in with all of my forums that I just HAVE to check in on. Busy sitting on the couch and watching TV. Busy doing nothing that means anything.

I was thinking, “How many reflection pictures can you take? How many rearview mirror pictures can you take? How many sunset pictures can you take?” Do you know what the answer is? As many as you want to. I don’t make a living doing this and neither do most of you. I do it because I enjoy it. I enjoy taking pictures of nothing and writing about it. I have gotten away from that somewhere along the line. Somewhere along the line I decided that I am too good to take ANOTHER sunset picture. Man, how wrong is that?

I have a very good friend who told me that I needed to go out by myself and find whatever it was that I was missing. She was right. Today I went downtown into an area called the Flats. It’s a gritty, dirty, crime infested place but I love it. I parked my truck and walked around, with my camera, for hours. I took a lot of pictures. Pictures that will never be published anywhere but pictures that I liked.

I took this one at the end of the day, before I had looked at the other shots from the day. I took it so that it could be my last picture posted on Pbase. I thought that maybe it was time to move on. Time to go and do this for me, not you. The more I thought about it though, Pbase is for me. You are just the ones that hold me accountable and make me keep taking pictures.

I will officially abandon my PaD tomorrow. Tomorrow I will start a new gallery called “Life”. I might post two pictures a day, I might post one a week. I will post things that I am interested in instead of forcing myself to come up with a picture everyday. That’s enough to beat the inspiration right out of you. It’s too much for me. My PaD became an obsession for me. When I missed days I felt bad about myself and that isn’t what this should be about. Too much pressure. Too much.

I will see you tomorrow. It’s a new day.......a fresh start.