This afternoon, though, I was walking around outside and I found a negative strip that someone had discarded. Naturally I picked it up and took it home and developed it. The strip had been run over by cars and stepped on, but it looked like at least one shot was salvageable:

I realize once in a while that I take too many pictures. Well, for the purpose of taking pictures you can never, in my opinion, take too many pictures.

But for the purposes of experiencing whatever it is in front of you, it is easy to go overboard with documenting it in a picture. I reach the point where I am not looking at things, I am only taking pictures of them.

There is a giant light switch in Times Square that embodies this obliviousness. I've taken hundreds of pictures while walking through Times Square, and inevitably I look at those pictures and in at least one of them I see an enormous Con-Edison branded light switch. I have never, ever seen that light switch in reality, but it must be there because it shows up in my pictures.

The light switches in my apartment are inconsistent. Some of them you turn up to turn the light on, others you turn down to turn the light on. Or vice-versa. And I swear that every once in a while the hot and cold water dials in my shower reverse themselves.

Many years ago somebody told me that her friend went on vacation to Italy for a week and came back with 3,000 pictures. To me that was not a vacation, it was a documentary.

(Vacation is a funny word. Is someone on vacation vacating?)

I'll take 3,000 pictures in a week without ever leaving town, but I still think 3,000 pictures of Italy in a week was crazy because that person was using film. I use mostly digital cameras, which typically generate fewer by-products, so to me it doesn't seem as excessive. And again, for the purpose of taking pictures you can never take too many.

I got excited by my friend's offer to give me his darkroom equipment. I have never developed pictures, though I have wanted to try. As much as photography itself intercepts reality I have started to feel like digital photography further disconnects photographers not just from the reality in front of them but from the photograph itself. I don't like handing off anything of creative significance to a computer because I don't have enough control over the results.

Machines of Loving Grace

I think the enthusiasm for darkroom development came from the work I've been doing with my digital piano. I know the feel and scope of a real piano as well as I know anything, and I could talk to you all night about the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between a real piano and the newer breed of high-quality digital pianos.

But I've been doing digital photography for over 3 years, and have started to realize that I lack depth of knowledge in that I don't understand what the digital camera technology is trying to imitate. I also have started to doubt the expressive depth of digital prints.

(I asked a friend if he wanted to see some of my digital prints. He said "I'd love to meet your digital prince!" Ha! Ha! Isn't it funny when someone breaks up their laughter into single, barking chunks of HA! punctuated by a second or 2 of silence?)

Tonight I recorded this: Chopin: Nocturne, Op. 9 #1. Knowing how much better I can do, I know that these recordings I make here at home have a certain staleness to them, and a certain stiffness of technique. But I just don't have time to practice these days. Practice, and technique, are almost everything.

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