I wrote a while back about the tradition of photographing people we love as a culture and as partners with a lot of diffuse back illimunation the way Marilyn Monroe was shot in Some Like It Hot. Out of a few shots from a recent family get together, this is amongst my favorite. Something about the illumination is angelic, and that’s fitting. 

The question of wether or not this blog is something like work, or something like a diary extends to everything else I do creatively. 

I don’t really make pictures purely for aesthetic value any more. I don’t go out and think about composition and color and meaning, I just have a nice camera and I bring it to nice places to be there with people who I think are nice; the art makes itself. 

I don’t know if the images I make would be interesting for someone who isn’t me or someone who isn’t slightly related to me to look at. Some of them certainly might be, but most of them wouldn’t be. 

Would this blog be interesting to read for someone who I don’t know personally? Should I be working on making it more worth reading to strangers?

I don’t believe I really care much about strangers and what they think about this work, such as it is. I only care so far as I want to capitalize on it, and capitilizing on it is something I think I ought to resist. I don’t do this in order to make money, though I would like to make more money. Making more money would be nice, and if there’s a way to do that by doing this, well, I don’t hate this. 

I might hate this if I relied on it to pay my bills though, that’s a sad fact of profit. Or maybe it isn’t sad. Is it sad that balls roll down hill? Is it sad that snakes die? I mean, maybe a bit, but it’s also a bit of a rule, a bit of a standard. It isn’t a surprise, anyway.