11 – On Work

Day 11 of 100, Singapore

Gave the front page a face lift today. This site, for the most part, is a blog and has been for as long as I’ve had it. And my blogging has traversed that line from candid memoir to desired identity, along with the role that photography played in my life. Progressively, I no longer wrote about the random observations of life, and instead found myself engaged in attempts to create photo essays when it was all the rage to call yourself a storyteller; then single image sharing, when I decided I wanted to be a street photographer, and – the gods help me – terrible attempts at gear reviews.

Along the way, having a blog became a little bit stressful. The header image, when you hit this site, was always that of the latest post. Which meant that if I wasn’t happy with it being the defining image, all I had to do was publish a new post with something else. Easy enough right?

As it turned out, it was easier to try and forget I had a site at all.

I wish so much of what I do didn’t live or die by the skin it lives in. But much of my work, photography or otherwise, revolves around exactly that – constructing the layer that faces the world.

So anyway, the point of this rambling post is: I am scaling back how critical blogging is to keeping the content fresh on this site.

This particular hundred day project will continue to its conclusion, but will no longer be the main thing about the site (i.e. the first thing you see when you land on the front page). I’ve been taking stock of my work, and have pulled a bunch of photos into several series. In addition to my long running Transit project, there’s also Strange Nature which I’ve been collecting for over a couple of years. And if you haven’t watched Beyond, you should do it a.s.a.p.

There’s also new stuff I began collating on this visit back home: Singapore Surfaces, which is largely undefined, and Closing Time, a mostly whimsical take on the Singapore most visitors don’t see, by night.

You can get to them all in Projects.

None of them are hard hitting. Just my different paths to seeing and learning. I was reminded today, at a workshop by artist Nicola Anthony, to challenge my default way of seeing, and introduced to a couple of methods to do just that. So I’m taking the first steps – by trying to understand what it is I look for. Wish me luck!