Creative: Postcards from the Northeast

Permalink 12 Comments

These are not great images. Full disclosure.
Vacation. Yearly. A getaway. These places, faces and moments are what we live for. Retirement. I thought about it for the first time ever a few days ago. For anyone my age thinking about retirement isn’t helpful, especially if your chosen profession was photography. Don’t know many photographers tapping out and easing into the promised land of RV’s and bingo. Nope. Most are working their asses off, or trying to.

Last year at this same destination I was shooting and posting everyday. Like clockwork. This year I shot eighteen pictures and didn’t post once. I come and go. Like the wind. Sometimes I feel the urge while other times I don’t want to communicate. Just another reason why I suck at online life. Oh well.

I love this place. I could see living here in the future, at least part time. Summertime. Maybe a touch of spring or fall. But that’s it. This place is green, lush, blue, contrasty. And yes, I did hear someone say “My dog sells Ralph Lauren.” It’s a long story.

You know how I feel about snapshots. You know. I haven’t changed, nor has my feeling about these often abused images. They are so great. Like visual one night stands. It’s just about pressing the button, about something personal. No strings attached. Right? And with these there is no guilt. (I wouldn’t know about the other honey.Not my style.) If I was alone on a trip like this I’d be shooting and writing my ass off, but I wasn’t alone. I was with her, the one, and my entire focus was on her, like it should be. Watching her small movements. Adjusting to her emotions and enjoying each breath like it was my last.

I think these trips are what make us whole. Without them we might not ever know who we are, especially now when all is so unright with the world. Yes, I just invented I word I think. My site, my right. Get it, got it, done.

Comments 12

  1. Reply
    1. Post
      Author
  2. Reply
    1. Post
      Author
  3. Reply

    You are STILL A PHOTOGRAPHER…and a good one. If memory serves me the best pictures Kertész and HCB took they took on vacation, or at least years before they made their living at photography. Vacation is the mother of all great street photography 😉

    1. Post
      Author

      Jim,
      That’s a great line. “Vacation is the mother of all great street photography.”

  4. Reply

    Nicely done, Dan. I just got back from a 4-day, 1,800-mile jaunt thru the Southwest, starting and ending at home in Denver. Just me, the car, beef jerky, and some cameras. I took a bunch, of whatever interested me in the moment.

    Another of the things I love so much about photography. It can be what you want it to, at that moment. It doesn’t have to serve a larger purpose. It can just “be”.

    1. Post
      Author

      Michael,
      That sounds like a great trip. I’m headed to Denver in a few weeks and might road trip back to Santa Fe.

  5. Reply

    The ferris wheel picture is brilliant. It’s like how little of the subject can you have in the frame and have it still be the subject. Damn.

    1. Post
      Author
  6. Reply

    Hey you know what? I don’t know what the word retirement means anymore. Whatever age you are ITS OK TO GO SOMEWHERE AND JUST BE. Do nothing. Relax. Everyone needs that because I think that is what refills the well creativity draws from. Sometimes you just need a period of time to reconnect with the elemental forces.

    1. Post
      Author

Leave a comment