OP
OP
lee said:
(*chuckle*)
Hey Lee,
I'll be the first to admit there's a certain "Anal Retentive Chef" component to most of what I do. When Dianna and I were writing our book, or when I was writing articles, I'd irritate more editors with lots of lengthy footnotes that would crawl up from the bottom of the page and start to crowd out the main content.
In defense of the level of effort I'm assigning to these postcards, three things come to mind, though:
- The difference in time, expense and effort between "good enough not to warrant shame upon posting" and my best effort seems to be small enough that I can't see not spending the extra resources to do so.
- One "feature" of modern life seems to be that with the increased unwarranted urgency of every single thing and the introduction of countless new ultimately barely moderately important things to get all cranked up about and then leave in some partially completed state, I've officially declared photography as the one thing that come hell or high water, I'll not declare done until I'm so close to completely satisfied with the result that any further effort would be an exercise in futility. Like just about everything else, satisfaction with photography is asymptotic. At the end of the day, though, I'd like to know that everything I've done behind a camera; in the darkroom; or bent over a print with a spotting brush, squinting through a magnifier, has crossed well over the threshold of pride. Photography is at once both my religion and my therapy: both cause and cure for my affliction.
- Whenever I make a "keeper" print, especially one to give to someone else, I'm mindful of the fact that 99.99%+ of all the photography being generated now will be either blank paper or vague magnetic whisps at the bottom of some landfill during my lifetime. Everyone working in analog, for that matter, should probably remember that their prints and negatives will be the sole photographic record of a generation or two in years to come. Out of all the postcards I will have made for all the postcard exchanges I will have participated in by the time I kick, it pleases me to know that maybe one or two of the postcards may end up in a cubicle in an antique mall a hundred years or so from now. I'd like try and make them pleasing to the eye and thought evoking for whoever picks them up in that distant time.
A friend pretty much summed it up when he quoted the Dali Lama to me once: "What you do is of absolutely no importance, and it's vitally essential that you do it."
-KwM-
