Been Gone Too Long
May 2009
There had been about two months when I barely picked up the camera. Not by design. Just the way things go sometimes — other work, a move, a stretch of weeks that were too full of the wrong things to leave space for the right ones. By the time I got out to shoot again, it was May and the light had that particular quality it gets in the first warm weeks when everything is still a bit surprised by its own greenness.
The first day back is always strange. The eye is out of practice. You see potential everywhere — too many frames, too much happening, all of it interesting in a way that crowds out actually deciding on anything. By the second or third day it settles. The habits come back. The patience comes back. You start seeing fewer things but seeing them more clearly.
This frame is from the third morning back. A street, early, before the day had got going. That is the whole of it. For the travel work in a more deliberate key, the Explore portfolio series has the fuller picture. Prints available at the prints page. The travel photography tips page has more on the technical approach.