Some pictures are tentative forays without your even knowing it. They become methods. It’s important to take bad pictures. It’s the bad ones that have to do with what you’ve never done before. They can make you recognize something you hadn’t seen in a way that will make you recognize it when you see it again. – Diane Arbus
This is a tentative foray — and it’s my second time to go back and attempt this shot. Let me explain the set-up: my six-year-old son and our lab are sitting in the laundry room looking out the back door. I happened to be doing laundry at the time and thought it would be interesting to frame them with the washing machine door. To add to the obscure/blur atmosphere, I used my lensbaby plastic optic. This is my second attempt at getting the shot.
It’s still not right — better than the first one. But I have to state the goal more clearly because I don’t think the picture conveys it without me having to use words.
It’s something I’ve never done before — photograph my situation, my role, from an outsider perspective. I’m framing my domestic life with domestic items and not in a brutal, post-modern meaninglessness, “oh this crazy suburban life” kind of way but rather with an air of mystery…detachment and mystery. After all, it’s the beauty and the mystery that keep us going, isn’t it?