AimlesslyChasingAmy

Spring has sprung in Texas and like a creature waking from hibernation, I actually left the house.  In my journeys I was both inspired and humbled.

In an effort to preserve bandwidth, I’ve not posted many pictures (which is killing me).  But I couldn’t resist posting a picture I took yesterday at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center and a tintype taken by Robb Kendrick. 

Kendrick traveled all over Texas using this 19th century photographic method to take pictures of 21st century cowboys and ranchers.  His exhibit is currently showing at the Bob Bullock State History Museum.  Together, the pictures and quotes represent a lifestyle frozen in the past, valued by people living in the present.

I have been obsessing about a new lens and toying with all the tricks and treasures of PhotoShop.  Wandering around the gallery I realized that the image, itself, is such a small part of photography.  Being able to convey what the image represents is everything.

The other day I gloated about scooping the Associated Press by an hour - a story, now forgotten, that the rest of the poker world had in a matter of just a few hours.  Humbled doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt meeting Peter Dale Scott.  This poet/professor/diplomat has uncovered documents that governments had hoped were buried and long forgotten.  From the Kennedy assassination to the Vietnam War to the CIA’s long association with drugs and the mafia and now to 9/11, he’s found sources that challenge prevailing “wisdom” and historically spun “fact.”

When asked about his methodology Scott quoted T.S. Eliot “There is no method but to be very intelligent.”  But he did confess there are better paths to take when investigating a story or issue.  While most people look at available documents, Scott tries to discern a pattern by what is NOT available; a template of the missing.  If a fact or document should be present in the archival records, but isn’t, you begin to look at it more critically.  Its absence can be far more telling than its presence.  By putting together a picture of what is systematically absent, you begin to develop clues that can be further investigated. 

Although born in 1929, Scott is an internet worshiper.  He acknowledges that 95% of what’s on it may be crap - but that it has also opened up access to source documents and a new breed of investigative researchers that have left the mainstream media in the dust.

So I left my house and saw the sun - and realized that I needed to spend less time in darkness.