I've been digging through a lot of old photographs over the last week or so trying to recover files lost during the backup fiasco and recatalog and reindex everything. It has made me nostalgic. Not so much for the places or the people or the things I was involved with then, but because of the mindset I was in that is evident through the photographs.
I used to photograph because I wanted to. Because I enjoyed it for both the process, and the result. I needed no more purpose than that. There was no meaning unless I decided there was. There were no requirements unless I imposed them. I just took beautiful photographs of whatever it was I felt like photographing. I photographed what I wanted and included people that were as interested in ends and means as I was.
It has really reminded me of where I was, how I got here, and why I started doing this in the first place. I want to spend the rest of my life making beautiful photographs, if for no other reason than because I can and most people can't. Is that so bad?
