Connecting to the joy of photographing everything.

It's 2025. The world appears to be quickly devolving into chaos. Fascists rule the roost. The weather turned nasty. Wildfires are producing millions of tons of toxic pollutants that will go straight into city water supplies at the first rain. So dire. I could succumb to depression and despair but I only get one life to live (that I know of...) and it would be a pity to waste it all in an endless cycle of worry and frustration. And, besides, there's still photography. And still photography. 

It's a waste of time to sit around and ponder what another photographer might have been thinking when he or she was out taking photographs. I guess the main point will always be that we're discussing their work, their motivation, their value specifically because they spent the vast majority of their time out photographing. Even though Lee Friedlander's work doesn't move the needle for me he photographed what he chose to photograph at the time. Same with Garry Winogrand. Same with Alec Soth. Same with Richard Avedon. Let the photos tell the stories.

All that really matters is that you want to photograph and that you find joy in photographing. Trying to dissect what compelled someone else to photograph in a certain way, by reading time worn, short essays by their contemporaries is like trying endlessly to figure out how water really tasted to someone else. How different the process is for everyone! 

The real magic we can learn from our predecessors in the photography field is that they spent (and spend) their time fully engaged in the actual practice and not hampered by subsidiary activities that impede their forward momentum as working artists. 

TLDid't want to read? Poseurs talk, Artists work. 

So good to have seen videos of Robert Frank in his late years still constantly photographing... Same with Josef Koudelka.

If you aren't enjoying your relationship with photography these days it could be because there are so many unrewarding detours. Camera reviews on YouTube, essays on techniques of the past, tastes of past generations, and the ever present manifesto generation of people who would like to make photography solely an academic exercise, subject to endless contextual recasting. 

 What really matters is the feel of the camera in your hand, the sudden coming together of a great shot right in front of your eyes, and the happy happenstance that you were out there, right in that moment, ready to snap the shutter. 

Winter got you down? Too cold to go out and shoot? Too gloomy to provide the light you want? Take action and go somewhere else. You only go around once. It's on you to change the channel if you don't like the program currently being offered.