While watching the 4-H youngsters going about their business at MontanaFair in Billings this month, I was struck by a parallel. Here I am in 2009, at a fair ground: a photojournalist, making pictures of cowboys in every direction I look. Don’t any of us know that none of us are supposed to exist?”
[...]Professional photojournalists have only their eye, their experience and their work ethic to create lasting images. It has nothing to do with what kind of lariat they’re carrying.
[...] if you can’t make a great picture in your own backyard, it isn’t going to happen anywhere else.
Nice piece by Kenneth Jarecke on the Lens Blog.
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Man, this is really well said. And it can be applied to so many different creative disciplines. Like, magazine publishing, for instance…
“… if you can’t make a great picture in your own backyard, it isn’t going to happen anywhere else.”
This one simple statement will stay with me for a long time.
Thanks Rob for highlighting this beautiful essay by Kenneth Jarecke. I saw the photos on the Times site but overlooked the writing. I loved both in the end.
I may never meet the photographer but I feel like I have made a new friend.
Today, I was running a bunch of errands and juggling way too many bags and packages on public transportation, sans camera, but I was looking, making pictures in my mind with this sentence as the defining melody.
It’s what I continue to love about this amazing blog.
An astounding essay. Thanks Rob, for pointing it out.
Tim
“Don’t any of us know that none of us are supposed to exist?”
That’s a great quote.
I want to live in a world where this is Rob’s blog topic that get’s nearly 300 comments. Alas, it’s a world that doesn’t exist.