“Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.”
– Charles Dickens
Black & White Photography
Arrangement, a photograph
“Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it.”
― Rollo May, The Cry for Myth
Together, on a lazy Saturday afternoon, one experiences the warmth of the sun on his face, the other the warmth of the phone in her hands.
Inner fire, a photograph
“The inner fire is the most important thing mankind possesses.”
― Edith Södergran, poetess
Anybody, a photograph
“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
― Virginia Woolf
Here, a photograph
“You may say to yourself: “Well, how did I get here?”
— David Byrne
They are a-changin, A Photograph
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
– Bob Dylan
Dee, A Photograph
“If you think we’re waxworks,” he said, “you ought to pay, you know. Waxworks weren’t made to be looked at for nothing. Nohow!”
“Contrariwise,” added the one marked ‘DEE’, “if you think we’re alive, you ought to speak.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
Or not to be, A Photograph
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub.”
― William Shakespeare
Naïveté, A Photograph
“Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naïveté, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do.”
― Steve Martin
Latency, A Photograph
“Who knows whether, if I had given up smoking, I should really have become the strong perfect man I imagined? Perhaps it was this very doubt that bound me to my vice, because life is so much pleasanter if one is able to believe in one’s own latent greatness”
― Italo Svevo
The Pioneer, A Photograph
“Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.”
― Robert Henri
Gently, A Photograph
“When you leave,
weary of me,
without a word I shall gently let you go.”
― Kim Sowol, Poet
Bird of Space, A Photograph
“For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.”
― Kahlil Gibran
Howe Street Dog, A Photograph
“The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.”
– Charles de Gaulle
Friends, A Photograph
“When you choose your friends, don’t be short-changed by choosing personality over character.”
– W. Somerset Maugham
A Tall Ship, Photograph
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over”
– John Masefield
Restless Urge, A Photograph
“…as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.”
– Daphne du Maurier
Very Married, Photographs of Marriage
This past weekend I spent the day shooting my first ever wedding on the little island of Vashon. I’m not a wedding photographer by any means, although the couple wasn’t looking for a “wedding photographer.” They wanted a street photographer (like me) to do an alternative to the traditional “posed” wedding as they’re a contemporary metropolitan couple. Pretty much every shot I took, including the ones of the bride and groom, were candid. Who knows…maybe I’ll do it again.
“If I get married, I want to be very married.”
– Audrey Hepburn
To Decorate, A Photograph
“Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.”
– Frank Zappa
Complete with back-up singers…
Myth, A Photograph
“I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?”
– John Lennon
Nonconformity, A Photograph
“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Alone, A Photograph
“Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don’t find themselves at all.”
– Rollo May
Old & Young, A Photograph
“I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine, one of the nation, of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest”
― Walt Whitman
Inside Man, Street Photography
“It’s not the men in your life that matters, it’s the life in your men.”
– Mae West
Imaginary Knowledge
“I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”
– Albert Einstein
The World
“In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce.”
– W.B. Yeats
Safe Harbor
“Seek opportunity, not security. A boat in the harbor is safe, but in time its bottom will rot out.”
– H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Empire, A Photograph
“Loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they too, fade away.”
– Milan Kundera
Everything, A Photograph of Love
“I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
Wait, A Photograph
“Are you ready?” Klaus asked finally.
“No,” Sunny answered.
“Me neither,” Violet said, “but if we wait until we’re ready we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives, Let’s go.”
– Lemony Snicket
One Street Shy 