A reason a season or a lifetime

As the uneven rhythm of my posts suggests, life has been chaotic. Not bad, exactly. Many people carry burdens I have been spared. Chaotic nonetheless.

For four and a half years I put much on hold to build a program at work. School, promotional testing, vacations, and hours I should have given to my family and my hobbies all went to the job. I regret that. Had I known the cost, I would not have started. The odd part is that I say this just after securing the very position I spent years building toward. It arrived late, well past my first enthusiasm. I am grateful for the trust my work has placed in me, but my hope now is to secure the program’s future, train a successor, and move on.

People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. I think challenges, opportunities, and blessings do the same.

I am leaving a season of working too much and aiming for balance. I cannot go back and gather what I dropped. I can begin here and do better.

I sold a pile of camera gear and stepped into a system I have wanted for nearly fifteen years: medium-format digital. Will it make my pictures better? No. Will it make me shoot more? Yes.

There is a story about a pottery class. On the first day the teacher split the room. One half would be graded on a single perfect pot. The other half would be graded on quantity. At the end of the term the students who chased one perfect piece came up short. They thought and fussed and froze. Their work was plain and they earned poor marks. The students who worked in volume made a mess at first, learned quickly, and finished with strong, lively pots.

The lesson is simple. Do not fear making bad work. Make a lot of it. Play and experiment. With each attempt you improve, and your work improves with you. That is the spirit I want as I start this next season. I plan to make a mountain of rough work. Turn the wheel. Let quality catch up. Perfectionism is not a humble brag. It is a hiding place. It keeps you from risk, from growth, and from the light.

So I will bring this old blog back, unfashionable or not. I will post portraits, photo essays, and video projects, and many will miss the mark. That is fine. The goal is not applause. The goal is to look back and see the long line of tries that led to good work. If someone later asks for advice, I hope to point to that pile, now buried by time, and say, Make your own, then stand on it and see farther.

The photos in this post are from a walk on 25th Street in Ogden, Utah. They start a project I call “Mountain West Main Streets,” which has waited for years. I plan to make photographs, short documentaries, and interviews with people in those towns. I also have tools that can build three-dimensional models of these streets. This is a project I once saw in pieces. Now I see how the parts fit. Stay tuned.

I looked at the analytics today and found that some of you do come by. That surprised me. If you visit and read, thank you. Enjoy the rest of the images…..