What Have We Lost?

We read a lot. Blogs. Newspapers. Magazines. Podcasts. (Listen to, not read) One favorite author is Margaret Rynkl who mostly writes for the New York Times. She covers just about everything south from a very gentle perspective.

Today, she said, “You’re pointing your camera the wrong way.”

She was mostly referring to the billions of selfies that are produced every day of the year. Secondarily, she was talking about the hoards of people who go to the same place as everybody else so that they can take an Instagrammable snapshot.

She mentioned cities and towns that have painted their walls with all sorts of murals so that tourists can have a place to take a picture.

Hmmm.

A colleague of mine who used to still be a lawyer take cruises with his with wife. She has no interest in photography and he seems to be losing his. They mostly eat, meet new people, eat, socialize, eat and take little boat sponsored tours after reading up on the location in something Rick Seves wrote… the world’s most famous boring tour guide.

Something my colleague wrote caught my attention about hop on hop off busses and that they weren’t always suited to tourists’ needs.

Wait a minute.

They exist in New Orleans and are called streetcars. They are a very elegant way to see a large portion of the city fairly quickly. But, they weren’t and have never been, designed for tourists. They are a way for blue collar, non car owning working men and women can go to their jobs and run errands.

You know, the folks who make the city run.

Where oh where did you ever get such a convoluted view of things?

I make pictures. For many years that’s how I put kibbles in my dogs’ bowls, but I worked for my pictures. I hunted. I studied. I hung out in cafe and bars. I tried to make pictures that were different from yours.

Nothing wrong with your pictures but why would I want to make the same ones or a bunch of pictures of myself?