Last week on my blog post, I asked if anyone could figure out how I made the photo I shared. What camera, what film what method did I use to create the “stitched” image above. A few intrepid readers got close (Mr. Atkins, in particular.) So, in the interest in full disclosure…I used my iPhone with a swanky app that simulates a bevy of old film cameras. This sharing was an exercise for myself: to see how the method, the process of making a photo impacts how it is perceived by a viewer. I also wanted to challenge my own biases about film vs digital vs iPhone photography. I am working hard this year to NOT GIVE A FUCK about the semantics and the dogma of image making. Do I like the picture? Do others like it? Does it matter? Does it matter how it was made? Do the answers to these questions mean anything to anyone? Probably not. I work hard to create images that do”something.” But that something doesn’t have to be earth shaking, transformative or revolutionary. They could be mundane. They could be entertaining to me and only me. They could be failures…digital ephemera that will float way within a few minutes of being shared. Dust in the wind, so to speak. This transience can be depressing, or it can be liberating. I choose the latter.
Autumn: The dying light
A personal rite of autumn, always undertaken in late November, is a wander through the open space of the Rio Grande bosque. I am drawn to the scent of decomposing leaves, the squawk of passing cranes, the subtle touch of chill in the air as the sun recedes to the western horizon. "Media vita in morte sumus."
