Child: “Mommy, where do babies come from?”
Mother: “Well, honey...babies start out as tiny stars in the nighttime sky. The stars fall to earth and Mommies and Daddies gather them up, give them love, and the stars grow up to become beautiful little children.”
Child (a few years later, when he/she feels creative stirrings and becomes interested in making Art): “Mom, I feel that I have Art inside me. How do I get it to come out?”
Mother: “Hell if I know, dear.”
Even though I have been making photographs for over 30 years, I would be hard pressed to tell you just where it is that my pictures come from. Geographically, I can say that many of the images that I shoot for myself and for my own enjoyment are made no more than one hundred yards from my front door. Creatively, all I know is that I take my camera into the woods near my house, or out to our barn. I play a little visual game: What can I see today? If I find images I like, fine. If not, I try to remind myself that this photo journey I’m on is an exercise, a visual workout. It needs to be fun.
The process of seeing and making pleasing pictures can be Heavy Labor, or it can be a Cakewalk. You just never know. The one thing I do know is this: If I find a photograph today, I will consider myself fortunate. If not, I will go out again tomorrow, hoping that maybe a star will fall from the sky...
