Future photos

Yesterday I flew back from Birmingham, England, where I'd been for three days at a conference for the blind. Generally I like air travel, even despite the increasingly ridiculous security theater, since it imposes a few hours of forced down time, with no internet, no phone, and no appointments to keep. At 35,000 feet, your only options are to read, sleep, watch a movie, listen to music, or stare out the window and think.

On each of the last few trips, I've suddenly had an idea for a photo (or, more often, the title of one) come to mind, and I've tried to quickly jot them down. I'm starting to put together a nice little list of ideas, which at some point I should try to shoot, once I stop taking flights long enough to do it.

By the same token, I'll occasionally glimpse a phrase somewhere and think to myself, "hmm, I wonder what kind of photo this would go with." This happened tonight as I was looking through the archives of Paul Madonna's excellent All Over Coffee. The particular piece was from July 1st:

I lost miles by slipping inches at a time.

I wanted to be Henry Miller,
Henry wanted to be Dostoyevsky.
and I remember wanting to be Dostoyevsky, too.

I had given up being Miller years before I read him,
so when I did,
he reminded me of someone that I missed.

Madonna's pieces are listed under the "comics" section, but in reality they have very little to do with comics. San Francisco is the protagonist, at least visually, but while the artwork is excellent, for me it's the emotional context of some of the pieces that attracts me most. I can't point to too many artists I'd like to count as influences, but if I could take photos the way that Paul combines words and drawings, I'd be happy.

Take a look at the archive...you may see something there that will end up as a photo someday.