Monday, May 18, 2009

A Photo a Day


It seems I've launched a new project. I'm going to be doing "A Photo a Day." Which is pretty self-explanatory.

I started talking photographs in around 2001, as I've written here before, when Nerve was a print magazine, and I was covering some bukkake shoot in the Valley, and they asked me would I bring a camera along. I borrowed a point-and-shoot that belonged to my boyfriend-at-the-time, and that was that.

Generally speaking, I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what an f-stop is, and I don't know that I want to know. I suppose you could call that "self-taught." Or you could call it "retarded."

With an extremely few exceptions in the past, I don't crop my photos or manipulate the image in any way. That's part of the "game" for me. Get it right in the field, or don't get it at all. Please do not send me long emails expressing your complicated views regarding cropping, or how all photos are "edited," or some such thing. It really doesn't matter either way.

I stopped taking photographs for several years, for several reasons, until recently, so this is my attempt to make it more ... thoughtless. More automatic. More intuitive. I don't think I'm particular good. Nor do I think I'm particularly bad. With photography, for me, it is what it is.

I like talking photographs because it's one of about two or three things in my life that I don't experience in a state of high conflict. You raise the camera to your eye. You push the button. You take the picture. It isn't any more complicated than that.

And that, I like.