Not sure I told you, but I entered a local art’s festival and won top prize in the photo category. Beat out all the lovely pics of autumn trees and Mt Rainier. I have since had a nice email dialog going on with the guy who judged the show. He lives up in Bellingham and is very old school. Shoots 8×10 film and works in the darkroom still. Interesting guy. He sounds a bit reclusive and lacking in community, so I turned him onto Geir and Kate who live in Bham as well. Remember them? We are not friends any more for reasons I don’t think I will ever know. They just gradually stopped communicating. I didn’t even know they had moved to Bellingham until I got the mass email press release. They never said a word before and I had to wonder how many times they have passed through Seattle and practically driven by house and never said hello. I guess things change. A mutual friend has had the same experience. She thinks Geir was jealous of my success, which is so weird, because I introduced him the folks at Getty who help me in my success. They wanted to sign him up too, but he passed. He could have had the same success. I also wonder if maybe he considers me a sellout, and that like Arnold, I only cared about my big buck assignments. I have often wondered too, if I sold out somehow? Down deep, I don’t believe I did, but I can see why folks might think that on the surface of things. I have always been interested in the whole range of the photographic experience. From making images for my own personal amusement to making images that will help promote a clients mission. I must confess that much of my assignment work over years was not that exciting and deserves to line the kitty litter box, but I had to make a living, and selling prints only paid for my habit. My favorite work is probably the early stock photo days. When I made whatever images I wanted and put them out into the world and waited to see if they found homes. I always applied the same thinking into making those images as I did with my personal work. Just make good pictures. And I loved seeing my work cross from art to commerce, from commerce to art. Not that I really know the difference. And I think I am too old to figure it out now. I am just going to keep doing it.
