After Hours

Maybe it was being across the street from the Cincinnati Art Academy. Maybe it’s this medium format itch that I’ve been scratching. All I know is that a few years ago, I was not interested in taking photos of random inanimate objects. I was not, am not, and most likely will never be an “art” photographer. In my mind, for a long time, it was almost a dirty word. Why waste film or space on a hard drive with pictures of leaves and cracks in the sidewalk and litter?

I’m feeling my photographic life shifting at the moment, and while I don’t completely like it, I can’t really change it. I really don’t feel like I have a choice in what I shoot. I just shoot. And the frames that I’m drawn to later… well, I don’t have too much control over that either.

Maybe I’m not in enough documentary, journalistic situations. Maybe I’m discovering a part of photography that most photographers got out of their system when they were kids, but that I sort of skipped. I just hope it doesn’t suck. I don’t want my photos to suck. I’d take photos crumpled paper the rest of my life if I thought it moved people.

Anyway, here’s a gate. It’s just that, a gate. See it for what you will. For me it’s a symbol of this new tug I’m feeling in my image making. In some ways it seems too easy, too boring, too “already been done.” But we’ll see… together. Because I’ll keep posting my pictures here whether the shots are of gates or people or whatever. Leave some mean comments on this post, so I stop taking shots like this. Unless you like it…. then tell me that, too.

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