February, 2009, San Francisco

I always took pictures. Especially once I got a digital camera, it was pretty common to see me with a camera, out wandering by myself, usually. But it wasn't until January of 2009 that I accepted a concept that I had previously rejected: it is acceptable to post-process. I don't know why I'd clung to this antiquated notion that I needed to preserve every image exactly as my camera recorded it, I really don't. But after I let that idea go, everything changed. It was so freeing to think that I could shoot whatever I wanted and that I could edit it later -- in writing we call that revising -- to shape it however I wished. And with that freedom, new voices came out of me, and once they came out, it's been almost impossible for me to silence them. In January of 2009, if asked what my passion was, I would have said fiction writing, but a month later, the photographer who was always waiting inside me finally found his voice, or the beginnings of it, and since then, I really haven't written much, but I've taken maybe 15 thousand photographs.


Here are five. These are all taken within days of each other on some of my first outings with my previously underutilized Canon Rebel, taken finally with the knowledge that I could bring their dull voices home and teach them to sing. They were all shot in February of 2009, and one was taken on my birthday. Most were taken in my neighborhood in San Francisco, and one was taken near the Golden Gate Bridge.

A lot has changed since February of 2009.