"Celebration" by Wes Aldridge
It’s been a long, hard ride, but it’s been one I’ve enjoyed. About this time last year, I was celebrating the beginning of 2005 with my friend Scott and I ran across a blog site that interested me. It was about a group of 7 photojournalists that lived across the country. Each day one of the photojournalists would post a photograph from one of their assignments of the day and discuss the shot, i.e., how they found it, difficulty of shooting it, camera settings, etc. I thought this was pretty interesting because I always try to learn from other photographers and I enjoy their “war stories” about getting a shot for an assignment.
Well, at this point the champagne had been flowing rather freely. I thought, “That’s cool, but I bet I could do a year-long blog like this all by myself.” I tooled around for a little while on the Internet and figured out what a blog was and signed up for my account at Blogger.com. Then and there, “The Mind of the Photographer” was born.
Needless to say, a photo-a-day is a tough thing to do. There were days when I would be on assignment in the middle of East Nowhere and I couldn’t find an Internet connection to get it posted, but I did. There were days when I was sick, uninspired, pissed off, depressed, or simply uninterested in making a post. There have been all kinds of circumstances that really made this thing hard to do. It took more dedication to keep this going than anything I have ever tried in my entire life. I was not paid or compensated for it in any fashion. There was no incentive to keep it going. It was for me and no one else. It became a part of me. It was a driving force in my life and I think I have been able to witness an evolution in my photographic learning this year.
And now, it is over. I hated it and loved it at the same time and I think it will be interesting to see how my life adjusts to not “have to” find the blog shot each day. It might be wonderful or maybe just drive me insane, who knows at this point. Time will tell.
The final photo I felt had to be a self-portrait of celebration. We spent a couple of hours gathering the props and making the confetti show up in the shot just right. I almost forgot to thank the people that made it happen with me... Brian McCord, Joyce Caruthers, and Jill Wyatt. Without them, this shot would have never materialized. Thank you all very much.
