I was working out on our indoor cross country ski machine the other day, ear buds plugged into my head, when my Pandora station apparently forgot that I am of the 61-years-old-geezer demographic because a rap song by Macklemore titled “Ten Thousand Hours” started playing.
The lyrics practically stopped me in my, uh, tracks.
“You see, I studied art
The greats weren’t great because at birth they could paint
The greats were great because they paint a lot
A life lived for art is never a life wasted.”
Even though Macklemore is a recording artist whose music is certainly embraced more by those in the Millennial Generation than by old farts like me, I loved what I heard. Earlier that very day I happened to make the images you see here; and though I did shoot the pictures partly at the request of some friends who like calla lilies, the real reason I tackled this atypical-for-a-photojournalist subject matter was that I love to practice photography.
In the 35 years I shot for newspapers, I can’t remember ever being assigned to photograph a flower. But now, because much of what I do is self-generated, I shoot pretty much whatever excites me... and
I'm happy to say that that is most everything.
