A Red Woman Was Crying

The Hilo Daily Image was the continuation of a project I began in Colden, NY (in the country south of Buffalo) in September 2012, and continued when I moved back to Hilo to live in my childhood house in the Pi'ihonua neighborhood.

In Colden for 500 days I made an image every morning, restricting myself in various ways but most importantly by location. In Colden I did not leave the deck behind my house. I was making it as difficult as possible for myself.

I gave up the first series in January 2014. But in August 2014 I realized that I missed making the daily image and the structure and discipline it requires, so I restarted it.

The Hilo Daily Image series ran continuously for 2,100 days --  I occasionally made the image elsewhere on the Big Island, as was this one, a winter solstice image made at Hilina Pali, or this one, a lava image from the Pu'u 'O'o eruption.

Now (May, 2020) that I'm living in a forest near Ithaca, NY I've begun the Dryden Daily Image, and will continue it for as long as I can.

For me, it's an excellent practice, in the same way that yoga or meditation are excellent practices for other people. That's pretty much it. I have no grand theoretical or aesthetic scheme. I've discovered that the discipline required in finding something to shoot in a defined area, deciding how to shoot it, and then processing the image into what I saw or, sometimes what I didn't see out there, is helpful not just in photography, but in my writing. I learned years ago that no matter where you take your camera, there's always a picture to be made. If you can't find it, you're not giving the task your full attention.

To paraphrase something my friend the poet Irving Feldman told me years ago, when I'm outside with my camera I ask myself:

Is there a picture here?

What is that picture?

Can I make that picture?