[Leica] Re:More comments: how do you use your images

[scott at adrenaline.com (Scott McLoughlin)]

>
>
>> I am hoping to stimulate a bit more discussion on this topic: why do 
>> you take the images, what do you do with them, how big do you print, 
>> how do you print, why do you print etc 
>

I hope to produce a body of work that my family and kin and friends can look
at once I'm dead, or at least, once many of the subjects of my pictures 
are dead.

Lately, I'm printing more and shooting less.  I figure that once I'm 
dead, some boxes
of prints will be more accessible than some hard drives.

It's funny to look at pictures of dead people that mean something to 
you. Sometimes
a beautiful picture grabs you. Other times something prosaic can bring 
you to tears -
a prom picture, or a shot from summer camp, or the pictures on your 
mother's
bedroom walls when she was a teenager.

Sometimes what's more remarkable is to think of who took *that* picture.
My grandfather (still living) had a real eye and knack with a brownie 
camera
in his day, and I've often been startled by his compositions.

When someone dies, alot of things get lost or thrown away. Closets of 
clothes,
boxes of old jewelry, dog eared paper backs, keep sakes that will mean 
little
to anyone but the deceased.

But pictures get thumbed through and passed around and circulated. I've
seen tin types (sp?) of my great grandmother, along with her diary which
is mostly records of her meagre finances as she kept house for some
better off relatives as a young girl.

Photography is my hobby. I enjoy the process and the gear. Futzing with
an image is a joy in its own right.  But I have to say that for me, the 
result,
the product or print, has alot to do with our mortality, the 
anticipation of
death, and sparking the memory of those still living.

Scott