What do you do with your days off from work? If you’re a doctor, do you take your stethoscope in hand and go door-to-door near your house, asking to check your neighbors’ hearts and lungs? Perhaps you are a plumber and you grab a wrench and crawl into that tiny space under The Wife’s kitchen sink to tighten a leaky pipe?
Well I’m a photographer, and when there’s a day when I’m not getting paid to take photographs, I do them anyway. For fun.
I began learning photography's magic when I was 16-years-old. I was editor of my high school’s newspaper and also shot pictures for the school yearbook. Many school days my journalism teacher would give me a hall pass, and, while other students were stuck at their desks solving geometry problems, I was moving freely around the school taking pictures of whatever I pleased. Several times when I ran out of film, another teacher gave me the keys to her Fiat sports car so I could make a quick trip--again, while other kids were in class--to the local camera shop.
In the nearly 40 years since high school, not much has changed in my life. My camera is still my passion and my excuse to be curious, my hall pass to move freely from here-to-there, looking at what my fellow human beings are up to. Last week I spent several happy hours at an event in Seattle called Tibet Fest, a coming-together of Seattle’s small Tibetan culture. There was music and dance and wonderful food. The Seattle Center House was filled with prayer flags and Tibetan flags and beautiful human faces.
I once read (I wish I could remember where) that "photography explains man to man, and each man to himself.” So often I meet people who express envy that I am able to make a living as a photographer. What those folks don’t understand is that, more than making a living, photography helps me find Life.
