Who is your audence, your clientele? Whom do you wish to engage, or to impress?
Your friends? Your teacher? Your best friend, or your potential best friend?
Who, or what, inhibits your work? What pictures would you make if you knew certain people would not see them?
Who gets to be your primary critic?
http://www.ianaleksanderadams.com/blog/my-mother-writes-on-gray-days/
I open the Sunday Magazine; there’s a piece on Fred Hersch.
There is no doubt whose photographs accompany the text: a certain Mr. Lee F.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31Hersch-t.html?hpw
You will prefer a reliable brand of 35mm SLR (single lens reflex) or RF (rangefinder) camera for the course at Barrington Huge School, among which are Canon, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus and Pentax. Only one lens is necessary; a flash attachment is not. Likely hunting grounds these days include Alpine Camera in Des Plaines, craigslist.org, and Cash Converters in Hoffman Estates. Maybe you’ll need new merch from a place such as Batteries Plus; maybe you’ll need a rushed overhaul at a service joint like Digicam in Arlington Heights, or Alpine.
Whatever you do, don’t get this model:
http://www.unphotographable.com/archives.html
Is this useful, or just candy to you?
On Christmas morning the basement flooded(!). That means the darkroom is not available until the entire space is made new. I had set aside a number of days during the holiday break for shooting, roll film processing, proofing, enlarging and testing of specific procedures; now, all those activities are pretty much pushed back until later in January. A deluge does not contribute to work flow.
Compared to other picture-making, the darkroom “work flow” does not necessarily flow. True, I’ve found a way to print economically, spread out over a few days at a time, but the film developing (a joy in itself [I kid you not]) only makes sense when batched into one or two days.
What if I were to risk mold or spoilage or further water damage by going out to shoot instead of dealing with the mess, because the shooting is more pressing? Insanity. How much am I willing to leave my father and my father-in-law during their holiday visits in order to pursue some or another project? No way. Which parts of my life have to wait so that other parts may resolve themselves, only for me, at some yet-to-be-defined plane of meaning and resonance?
In one English teacher’s recent retirement speech to the rest of the faculty, he expressed what amounted to an apology to his family for the extent to which his career had consumed him and his available time. The tone of that part of his remarks was oddly unsettling (but not unwelcome, since these speeches are usually a tad more cookie-cutter). His wife and son were present; he sounded truly contrite.
Nicholas Nixon made a reference, at his last Chicago appearance at Columbia College, to being less than immersed in his children’s childhoods. It struck the same melancholy note, albeit buoyed by their eventual apparent coming to terms with his lifestyle.
As the Sean Connery character Jim Malone says in “The Untouchables,” “You see what I’m saying is, what are you prepared to do?”
Update: I started preparing this post on the 26th, and now, (the 29th) NYT published a not-unrelated article in the Science section, written by John Tierney, about a curable human frailty: pleasure procrastination.
He’s back to blawwggin.’
“The only time I take a picture is when tourists ask me to take one, with their camera. ( These rare works are now dispersed around the world, in private collections, mostly in Japan.)” -Geoff Dyer
…but click on the link for a nicely interactive document:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/corydalus/32762838/in/pool-gapers_block/
Here’s a potential whelming typology: my favorite kiosk names.
Always Cellular
Always Cellular 2
Always Cellular (I may have these out of order; I’m not certain which is #1 and which is #3.)
Beverly Hills Body Jewelry
Chooty Blanket
Couture Glam
Invisible Shield
piercing Pagoda (sic)
Santa’s Pen 
Splat Back! (out of business)
Super Fly Monkey 
Super Steam
Therapy Zone
Zippy Zoom
No favors of any kind were accepted in exchange for free publicity.
The following is an actual conversation at Woofie this morning (guaranteed verbatim).
Potential Consumer: “Do you sell webbed belts?”
Sales Associate: “Did you see any on our web site?”
Today is for brainstorming… so add your comments over the weekend.
Entre chien et loup
REM
Hypnagogic myoclonus
Recurring dreams
Writing ’em down
Fear of falling, fear of the unknown
The Bogeyman
Phobias
Finishing the last dream of the night
Flying/floating
Oversleeping anxiety (not arriving)
“Dream voice” awakens you
Creative Camerawork 