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B+W
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Now, I’m not looking
for sympathy, and I
don’t need anyone to
write in and explain
that that’s life. I know that the
things that prevent me from
taking pictures are partly down
to lifestyle choices and partly
a consequence of getting older,
and I wouldn’t change a single
one of them, thank you very
much. But that doesn’t alleviate
the feeling that I should be
shooting more, and I don’t think
I’m alone in feeling a sense of
frustration that the photographs
I want to take often have to siton the back burner. You may
not need to replace a U-bend or
stop your antifreeze dribbling
on to the road any time soon,
but almost everyone has life
commitments of one sort or
another, and most people
have non-picture-taking work
obligations to fill their days. So
unless you’re one of the lucky
few with the wherewithal that
allows a laissez faire attitudeto financial graft there’s every
possibility that your shutter
finger is often needed for some
purpose other than making an
exposure, and it’s quite easy for
taking pictures to slowly slide
down the to-do list. Put simply,
life gets in the way.
My own wake-up call came
with my recent house move,
when I watched numerous boxes
of things that I have collectedto photograph over the years
being tossed into the back of a
trio of removal lorries. Various
dinosaur and wild animal figures
were corralled into the trucks,
vintage toy cowboys and soldiers
fell into line, and a small arsenal
of (mostly inherited) replica
guns, knives and swords raised
a few eyebrows, especially when
juxtaposed with the various
animal bones and skulls collected
on rural rambles. In each case
I was reminded of projects
that had been planned and
provisioned, only to be put on
hold because I didn’t have the
necessary gaps in life that would
enable me to forget about chasing
my next payday or trying to stop
the house from collapsing into a
pile of leaking sanitary ware while
the wheels fall off my wagon.H
owever, witnessing all of
these would-be projects
being put into trucks
made me realise that my
longstanding excuses might not
be quite as absolute as I might
make out. While it’s true that I
rarely have completely free days
(let alone weeks) where there
isn’t something slightly more
pressing to attend to, I don’tLeft A bewildering array of
would-be subjects had to move
house with us, including numerous
boxes of toy animals, dinosaurs
and cars from my office. It was
quite difficult trying to explain to
the removals people that ‘no, I
haven’t confiscated the children’s
toys – these are all mine...’Above I have always loved the aesthetic of pinhole photography and have
numerous cameras that I would love to use more often. Sadly, though,
there just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day (or week or year)
to indulge my primitive photographic urges.