I don’t think I’ve brought my camera to the drop-in since May. Having posted the first edit to my site here, I felt like the work was sort of complete, at least for the moment. I brought my camera with me on Thursday, but I wasn’t planning to shoot, I just happened to have it with me. I was hoping to find some of the people I photographed in May to give them prints, but none of them were around. Apparently Gerry is in Sudbury.

Anyways, I felt like an ass with my big honking camera there, like everyone I wasn’t sitting with was looking at me and imagining all sorts of exploitative intents in my mind. I don’t usually go on Thursdays, and it’s busier and there’s a lot of people who don’t come on the weekend when I usually volunteer. So I felt like an ass.

That’s neither here nor there, except that it felt a lot better being there yesterday. One man used to have his own darkroom and shot with a Rolleiflex, but he lost a lot of his equipment when he landed on the streets. I asked him yesterday if I could photograph him sometime for my project, and he said sure, although he didn’t know why I’d want to. I said, “Why wouldn’t I want to?” and he didn’t have a response to that. When I told him that I would want to publish them in the context of being made there, he confessed that he was actually delighted to be asked. Delighted. That was his word. It’s funny that I feel like such a vulture sometimes, when a lot of people are just happy to be seen.

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This week I went to my uni library again, and I’m so impressed with its collection of photography books. They just acquired Doug Dubois’s All the Days and Nights, which I actually ordered last weekend (it’s on sale for $30 for the hardcover on Amazon.ca – a deal I couldn’t pass up, especially since I’d been scoping it out ever since it was released in June). I picked up Alec Soth’s Sleeping Along the Mississippi, and I can’t stop looking at its pages. The Internet really doesn’t do justice to his work. It occurred to me as I browsed through different photography books at the library that I want to look at photography that keeps me looking. I saw lots of books that had interesting concepts or stories, but when I looked at the pictures, I didn’t want to linger over them. The photos didn’t make me want to keep looking.

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I suspect my photos do not keep people looking. The other day I had a horrible thought. You know how So You Think You Can Dance always features lots of bad auditions by really bad dancers? And sometimes they’re shocked and disbelieving when the judges tell them they suck? Like they truly can’t see the difference between their own dance and that of better dancers? What if that’s my photography? I say this not to fish for compliments – if you complimented my work right now I wouldn’t believe you anyways – but to be honest about the self-doubt I’m feeling. I kind of hate all my pictures.

I found a ray of hope on Nevada Weir’s blog when she outlined the ten stages of a travel photographer’s development. I suspect it can be reasonably generalized to any photographer? Anyways, the ninth stage is when you hate everything you’ve ever done, so fingers crossed I’m on the threshold of some enlightenment or breakthrough.

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Apparently, my judging part is working overtime these days. Photolife magazine published their list of emerging photographers. I got excited at the thought of discovering some Canadian photographers so I bought it. Some of the images grabbed me so I came home and checked out the photographer’s websites. And I was really disappointed. Most of the sites I visited had slick-looking sites, but they were totally unusable. The navigation was impenetrable, they took too long to load, and in one case the only way to see someone’s photography was to click next on each image with no indication of how many pictures there were to get through, or any kind of categories. So when I hit a bunch of work that did nothing for me and bore no resemblance to the work published in the magazine, I just gave up because I couldn’t see any other way around. It just amazes me how many web designers there are out there with absolutely no concern for the user experience. <Ok, end of rant.>

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Oh wait, just one more thing. The other day I was sorting through my pictures of John. I have date with him later today to go to pretty much the diviest bar in town — also the only bar downtown that I never once visited during my uni years — where he occasionally goes for a beer. Anyways, I discovered this picture, which I rejected on the first pass-through, but now I think it’s pretty good.

I like the little wisp of smoke, the red ember, the outlet coming out of the wall, the box of cereal beside him and the carefully closed bag from the box on the arm of the couch.

I can hear Don Weber’s voice now, “You’re a LOUSY editor.” It wasn’t originally directed at me, but I think it fits. Now how can I learn to be a better editor?