Mike Johnson at The Online Photographer does it again – in a wonderful post inspired by what may be his final visit to the family summer home:

I have often compared photography to fishing. I think it’s the best metaphor for the type of photography I do, and the type I like: you educate, prepare and equip yourself as best you can, and train by practicing, but, in the end, what you catch still depends on luck, chance, fate, and whim.

I’ve taken tens of thousands of pictures in Northern Michigan, I suppose. But no matter how many pictures I’ve taken, I’ve probably seen ten times as many, if not more. That’s certainly the way photography is: there are far more fish in the river than one fisherman could possibly catch in the brief time he’s got to fish. The photographs I’ve made, nice though many of them are, are no match for the ones that got away.

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Mike Johnson of The Online Photographer:

It’s always seemed odd to me that cities don’t have photographers. The White House has an official photographer; so do football teams and opera companies; why doesn’t Chicago? Is Phoenix too bland, Atlanta eternal and unchanging, Portland, Maine uninterested in what Portland, Oregon looks like? Cities have official coffee-suppliers, inkwell-fillers, pothole-fixers, numberless keepers of records and documents less worthy than what the place look like when. Any elightened city should have at least one full-time photographer out in it day after day recording the comings and goings, the tearing down and the building up, the passage of life and the comings and goings of the people, the look of the place in the rain and the winter and at night and in times of celebration and crisis and boredom. Any parent does as much for the changing aspect of a single child, as
grows and changes forever. Any city is forever disappearing. Why not notice? [The Online Photographer]

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George Barr at Behind the Lens shares a post I can identify with:

Unloved Images

In the previous article I indicated that taking photographs for yourself is entirely justified, and illustrated it with a picture of my bedroom. Except to illustrate the point, I’d never show that image – it’s for me only… – George Barr [Behind The Lens]

(Read/see the article.)

I have a some photographs like this as well – images that I like quite a bit but which don’t seem to connect with other viewers. In fact, I posted one earlier this week – a photograph of a sandstorm in Death Valley. At about the same time I posted several other photos (including this one) in my photo.net gallery. The consensus seemed to be that the colorful landscapes were more appealing.

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

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