These brooms were leaning against the wall at the Star Works, an artist incubator located near Seagrove, North Carolina. I was photographing a pair of artists creating beautiful two toned whiskey glasses. During a break in the process, I noticed these brooms, walked over and made the image before returning to photograph glass making. It’s there all by its lonesome in my LightRoom loupe view. Many photographs of a single topic on either side, it is the square peg surrounded by round holes.
This image doesn’t belong to any project, genre or much of anything else that I have done. Something about this place told my subconscious make a photograph. I did that. Eventually I will figure out how to use this image.
One of the advantages of digital photography is the ability to “take a flyer” with a photographic situation. In the days of view cameras there was a huge investment in time both (in the field and in the darkroom) and in money to make a photograph. With digital photography, the time invested is small and almost no cost to record a scene. In the past I would have ignored the muse, but now I listen to her every word.
Well, I did figure out something about this image. About two years later, it showed up in my blog again about two years later in what later became a "Mostly True Story." Here's the text that accompanied the image in that project:
It was my first day on my first job. Mister Waddell explained my new responsibilities and what I was supposed to do. He said the first thing I had to learn about were brooms. There they were; straight straw brooms, angle brooms and push brooms. Then there is the hand brush and the dust pan.
He put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye and told me I was going to really clean up on my new job. He laughed and walked away.
My career had just begun.
I guess the answer is to make the image whenever the mood strikes you. You figure out what to do with it later.
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