I was on the cross country team when I was in high school many (MANY!) years ago, and to this day I run (or bicycle or hike) nearly every day. Last week I was in Ohio visiting my mother -- she still lives in the same house where I grew up -- and my morning running routes were familiar to me indeed because I was covering the same sidewalks and roadways I ran 40-some years ago.
Running is by far my favorite kind of workout, but, photographically speaking, it does have one downside: It is pretty much the only thing I do where I don’t have a camera with me...not even a phone camera. I sometimes wonder how many photographic possibilities I cruise right past and don’t even see when I’m running (however it's best that I not think about that, because, though I might be O.C. about exercise, I’m more obsessive about making pictures.)
I was in Ohio for four days and I ran two mornings and the other days I went for one-hour walks, one of which was in fresh snow. It was that day that these two images were made. The above picture was “found” while the other was “arranged,” and I go back-and-forth about which I prefer. I’ve put both photographs on my iPad, and, as I review work in the coming months, maybe I’ll decide one is better than the other.
Or maybe I should just go do a workout and think about the images. After all, forty years of running, cycling and hiking have given me the certain knowledge (wink wink) that a brain swimming in endorphins can find answers to nearly all of Life’s Questions.
