Blogging

Ironically, this post doesn’t have a photograph.

I was never one for keeping a diary. I tried once when I was a kid. I think I wrote in it for three weeks. At the end of the three weeks I reread my entries and already felt embarrassed about what I had written. I promptly threw it in the garbage: a move I regret to this day. I even tried to keep journals but for some reason it just didn’t work.

Then a few years ago I started a blog. It was restricted to a few friends and it wasn’t much. Just a place for me to record some random thoughts and I almost never included pictures. I had put my camera away for years and really didn’t think much about it.

One day I decided to back up all of my old blog entries. I read through each one and was amazed at how they all came together as a whole. I had gone though a lot of changes. The girls had grown and changed. There were plenty of good days and plenty of bad days. There were even quite a few funny days. But the most striking difference between the blog and that first diary was that I didn’t feel embarrassed. I think I finally understood what a diary was for.

I was visiting Susannah’s website one day and saw the Unravelling course that she was hosting. It took me quite a while to commit to pulling my camera out for the purpose of seeing myself from another point of view. It was terrifying but I did it and I’m so glad that I did. I met some pretty amazing people, heard some really great stories and saw some fantastic photography. I got my camera out of hiding and started to see. I also decided to create this blog. I thought I could start incorporating more photographs in my entries. I figured that I would think of what I wanted to say, take a quick photo and slap it up here. Done. But it turns out that that isn’t how it works. It’s so much more complicated and wonderful. I find myself thinking of entries like assignments. How to document a thought with a photograph. The “master plan” of an idea gets changed and altered but it almost always requires me to go somewhere I wouldn’t normally have gone, do something I wouldn’t normally have done or see things in ways I had never seen them before. It almost always changes my life for the better.

Take the last post for example. I stumbled across the clip for Julie and Julia and knew that I wanted to share it. Then my assignment brain stepped in and started to think of possible photographs. The image was begging to be a sweet treat. A french sweet treat. Sugar puffs were the perfect answer and so the entry about the movie, the photo of the sugar puffs and the link to the recipe was born. After it was all said and done I had a tray full of sugar puffs that needed to be devoured. It that didn’t change my life for the better I’m not sure what would.

p.s. Thank you to each and every one of you who stops by. It always puts a smile on my face.

Comments

[Chris]

You sound just like me. I had a diary in the first grade, and wrote all of one entry in it, something about how a kid in my class had lice and I was scared. I didn't throw it out, I saved it all those years (I'm not quite sure where it is right now) and I'm glad I did. I've always liked the concept of a diary/journal but just never stuck with it.

But I agree with you, a blog is like an online diary of sorts (that's what I always tell my friends). And every so often I go back and read what I've written, and it actually seems interesting to me. So I keep at it. I have a separate photo blog where I just post images, nothing more, but I do feel tempted to write sometimes. That's what my non-photo blog is for, which I just link up to the other blog.

Anyhow, great post. No photo needed :)

[Graciel @ Evenstar Art]

I, for one, am very glad you got the courage to Unravell with your camera and start this blog. xo