I’ve had a draft of the post below “in the can,” so to speak, for months now. I first started it in October 2017, picked it up again in November, and then put it aside, so it seemed, for good. But I continued to poke at it subconsciously. More to the point, I’ve continued to pursue its subject, daily, since then. So I’ll put this up now, with the understanding that I think I’ve gone a ways further with the experience described below, and I’ll resume it later, with a Part 1 (and perhaps subsequent ones).
Image: Mom, January 1972: an “arty” photo taken with the first camera I owned. Looking back through old pictures, I discovered this through-the-crook-of-the-elbow viewpoint seemed to be an early favorite.
It took me a loooong time to get into taking photos with a smartphone. But I’ve recently tried to suppress my annoyance with the limitations by regarding annoyance as simple disguised resistance — resistance, that is, to learning a new skill.The impetus for this newfound patience: a challenge posed by a Facebook friend. “7 days, 7 pictures of your life,” enjoined the meme. “No words, no explanations — just black and white.” (Since it was a meme, after all, it further instructed us to pass the challenge on to someone different with each image posted.)
Despite my reluctance, I’d been considering some kind of phone-photography project for a couple years — even better, a black-and-white project. The challenge spoke directly to this prospect; my resistance had become, as they say, futile — irrelevant.
(As an aside, I admit I was also hungry for some sort of distraction at the time. The Pooch had passed on to greener pastures just a few weeks before, and I felt quite desperate for distraction from that grief.)
