But I'll be back again no matter where I go/ For it's only love that frees the fire for burning/ Then I'll take you in my arms and tell you all I know/ As I sing the early song of my returning -Phil Ochs

I am a photographer

having a hobby is easy if you can carry it in your pocket and you can forget to do it for months! I am drawn to photogtaphy because I am a documenter by nature. I am a messenger, I bear notes on my wings, and the world in my eyes. you are in some wwy ever so slightly entirely unique to you, a feeling creature. you see or you hear or you tuoch, you taste or smell. you orient yourself in space. I like to think that it is my purpose in existing to be a sort of sensory organ for the universe. a passing cloud of atoms, molecules, matter allowing the universe to see itself, feel itself, think about itself, love itself.

I am fascinated by the difference between photography and painting. photography, I have concluded, is not for showing what you see, it is for showing what the camera sees. painting, drawing, etc are for your vison. I think the best photography is photography that does not try to be what humans see, but instead embraces the eyes of the machine. there is no one objective way to view the rain that clings to your hair, to view the colours of the sunset, the scent of garbage. a bird is a fragmentation of parts. gleaming feathers, yes, beak, wings, tail, eyes. but it is also the sound it makes, it's calls, the rustle of leaves the noises other animals make in reaction to it. the barred owl is the plush grey feathers, is the curve of its beak and the glint of its eyes, but it is also the alarm call, the songbird-greek-chorus fortelling its knife-sharp doom. it's silence is not allowed. if the soft-edged feathers won't give it away, the world will instead.

there is no reality beyond wavelengths and pigments. this is why I feel my photography is lackluster when I want it to record what I see. I was failing to recognise a camera as an observer just as much as I am an observer. the camera was not failing to capture the moment, rather, there are billions of moments, and we were simply aware of different ones.

if you dip your fingers into the lint-filled pockets of the world, you will come out mostly with garbage. the shimmering beetle-greens of bottles, the blaring reds, the riverstones of our city streets and restless feet. I love the big things, of course I do, I love to feel small! but I can't help but be drawn to the garbage. it is an eternal curse of mine, that no matter where I walk, my feet always end up back in the same place. perhaps that is the pigeon in me. regardless, I feel, in my totally very real and important title of the Eyes of the Universe, that I must trouble myself more with the trivialities than the giants. I must look in more than out. I must see the leaflitter on the floor of my bedroom. the air that fills my lungs. I have friends to care for the clouds, for the mountains, for the galaxies. it is not my job, and that is ok.

in some lives, I get so very good at this photography bussiness. I buy all the best cameras and I remember what words like ISO and white balance mean, and I don't have to google them every time. I set the settings on my camera with knowledge and experience rather than clumsy trial and error. I am the kind of person with my name put on things, with titles after it, maybe. I go to art shows. I make tiktoks about photographing people on the street. someone finds my instagram about photos of litter and they make an article about me in some obscure publication. maybe I have children. would I take photos of the children?

do I watch them paint, their finger wet with pinks and blues and greens. and I realize I haven't felt things, with my hands in that way for so long. do I, burdened with the tresspasing joys of new fatherhood, look at my photos (my perfect photos) my award-winning photos- do I stare them down, the knowledge in them, the years of skill. the sterility of expertise. do I turn my eyes away, do I try to paint?

with all that said, here is a gallery of my photography. it is shaky, it is awkward, it is incomplete. here it is!