When I started shooting again after 15 years or so of pretending that I didn't have time, it was an addictive surprise to find that people (those on Flickr anyway) responded positively, not just to my old pictures, which were edited out of many thousands taken over many years, but to my newest stuff as well. It wasn't until I moved to Baltimore last year that I began to suspect that my success was due as much to where I had lived as to how much talent (if any)I had. After New Orleans other places can seem a little colorless and the unhappy truth is that I can see that in my pictures. Maybe it's a symbiosis that grew over time and in a way that I really never felt happening, but for whatever reason I seem to have done a lot of my best work in that city and I haven't yet found a way to get it going in the mid-Atlantic. Maybe I'll end up putting the camera away again, this time with only the excuse of a career change to fall back on. But if I do, I doubt I'll be able to start up again in 15 years when I've finally absorbed whatever it is that works for me in Baltimore and DC.
No comments:
Post a Comment