Lately I feel as though my photography has been all over the place. Somedays it is awful, other days I have made images with which I am really happy. I have good shooting days and bad.

It has been a long time since I have created images, I know during these years of absence I lost lots of learning time in regards to craft. Meaning, just like a great short order cook, flipping an egg in a pan without ever breaking a yolk is part of the craft of professional cooking and you can only learn this skill by doing it under pressure for what seems like a million times. It is only after doing it for years that you begin to see the nuances of each individual egg and how they react to heat, what the edges of the egg should look like, or is the white the right opacity so the egg stays together instead of falling apart. It is the rote skill set of the professional that is gained with years of experience that I feel I am missing.

On the other hand I also know what I am doing right now is searching for the right medium to fit the imagery I imagine in my head. It is an exploratory period, a time to find my way through successes and failures.

Yesterday, as I head to the door of the studio to go home, I look over to the table where I set my old trumpet from high school. I use it as a prop sometimes and yesterday I use it to test a new pinhole camera. What I see today though, catches my eye. I grab my phone from my pocket and take a quick pic. It’s a catchy picture, it is also so easy to make images digitally that I often wonder why I want to make film images.

The photograph gets me to thinking about high school and playing my trumpet. I think of the kinds of jazz musicians I listened too back then, guys like Maynard Ferguson. Mostly showy trumpeters who hit lots of high notes and play loudly, they are great clinicians with a flare for showmanship. To my mind, when I look back I know now the music is all dressed up but is pretty soulless. They aren’t Miles Davis or Chet Baker, trumpeters who view their music through the lens of their soul, their emotions pouring out of the bell and into cigarette smoke filled rooms, there are quiet moments, angry moments, and desperate moments in the sound of their horn.  It’s very personal.

I don’t think any one of these musicians works harder than the others but more they think differently about their music and what they want it to be, is it art or is it entertainment? It can be both, and it can be one without the other.

I ask myself while I am driving what kind of pictures do I want to make. I can ask myself this now. Years ago, as a kid of privilege, I don’t understand artists like Miles Davis. It is hard to make an emotional connection with the conflicted souls of others when living is easy.  It is only through hard times, dark times, and happy times that I begin to feel emotional connections to other’s plights.  It’s only now that I can understand their lives through the notes that come out of their horn and it is here, I realize while driving, from which I want my pictures to come.  I am Miles and miles from there but it is for what I am searching.