When we take pictures for the site, it’s quite often that for one picture here, there are 30, 40, 100 other images that we rejected out of hand. It’s not that I’m that great with a camera, and certainly not all pictures are FAB-U-LOUS, it’s that it’s this inside fight in my mind that I sort of know what I’m looking for, but haven’t learned yet how to get it.

Then all of that gets mixed in with this permission to really, really explore, particularly in the case of Charmer. I get to explore with my eyes. With my mind. And all of that comes through the camera.

I think a lot of that adds together and can get really frustrating. I try really hard to have *something* behind the images – some sort of story, or even just super-short snippet of life. Many times, it’s a thought (yeah, yeah, I realize what the pictures here say about my thoughts). But the images are my voice, my way of writing sometimes.

I like both – words and images. But images to me are more about the complete look. They can insinuate things. Suggest ideas. Make you wonder what came next. Show you what just happened. They can make me twitch looking at them – in good ways, in ways that challenge me to wonder why I just twitched.

They can also be foreplay. Messing around, with a license to really get up close and personal.

It probably sounds odd, but most of the time, especially on more close-up style shots, the only way I can get there, get the shot I want to share, is to imagine the camera is me. My hand. My touch. It’s me just almost touching, but not quite, and looking at all the lines, angles, and stories hiding there.

It pulls the energy from what we’re showing, it shares it (I hope) with you, the reader. Sometimes, I hope it helps you imagine that you’re there too.

Right. there. Seeing what we’re, I’m seeing.