Card #15
Exhibiting Skill
Be attentive to every thing. Look at life as
if you haven't seen it before. Each moment is
new, each moment is different.
- Exercise -
Find someone who will allow you to
photograph them doing something they so
well. Photograph them as if you have no
idea what they are doing but that you are
obsessed with recording every motion,
every detail. The more "mundane" the
activity the better...the more and varied the
images the better!
Part of what I was trying to do in my First Person Rural series was to sanctify the everyday work of human hands. Tending their animals, crocheting an afghan or peeling apples for a pie, perhaps mundane in their "everydayness" but I saw them as concrete extensions of the personality and soul of the doer. When we sanctify daily work we give value to the soul. I believe it was St. Francis who said, when asked while hoeing his field what he would do if he knew he would die tomorrow, "I would finish hoeing my field." Human hands are a wonderful subject for the contemplative photographer. 
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