Write-only journals
In Paul Graham's latest essay he mentions that he writes down a lot of things he never goes back to read. I do this too. I suppose a lot of people do.
I like writing on paper with a fountain pen. The relative slowness of handwriting compared to speech or typing constrains me to thinking in a particular way.
I think I'd like to start a time-lapse journal, recording something every December.
It occurs to me that you can take photos in a similar way. The world is so saturated with images that you'd have to be very skilled and lucky to take something that stands out. Even photos that are technically very good and creatively composed jostle for attention with a million others just as good. I think the thing is to remove the comparison; enjoy looking at them or taking them for their own sake.
(Or at least this is true for a dilletante like me; if photography is really your vocation and passion things may be different.)
(If you can find someone to pay you for making photos or software or whatever then of course you need to pander to them to some extent, without being too bashful about whether you're original or not. Originality for its own sake is very rarely commercially succesful. More accurately: you can be commercially successful without being original, because the innovator is likely to mess up the commercial aspects.)
posted Thu 9 Sep 2004 in /photo | link
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