Wondering

  I am at a crossroads with my photography.  I have spent most of my life pursuing my passion.  I am now in my 70's and realize I have a huge inventory of fine arts prints.  I devoted forty years of working in the darkroom making exhibition prints ready for display in galleries.  As the years passed by I managed to make a thousand prints all archival processed and mounted. I had little awareness of the inventory I was creating because my drive to explore and photograph was insatiable.  As photography turned to digital I continue to produce new work and make more prints.  Recently I made an assessment of my inventory and decided to eliminate about half of all the images I have created so far in my lifetime.  Something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago now made sense.  I have found that you reach an age where you can see the end and with that realization you start to think differently.  Most of life is lived with the expectation of the future and mentally you are painting a picture in your mind of what that will look like.  Photography opened a world up to me that wouldn't have been there if I never picked up a camera in my youth.  Because of the camera I have traveled to destination I never would have gone. I have met people and made lifelong friends because of photography.  Photography also comes with the burden of long dry spells of the lack of feeling inspired, but still the desire is there to create that new image.