An author I greatly admire, Pema Chodron talks about the need to "move gently toward what scares us".  In life, I find this to be sage advice, for I often find my own preconceptions scarier than the realities I presume they portray. Street photography is a unique way of interacting with the world, and I highly admire some of it's adherents such as Andre Kertesz, Walker Evans, Gary Winogrand, and of course Cartier-Bresson. Alas, I am very 'wet behind the ears', as the saying goes, a neophyte. I struggle with the method, how to be discrete without being 'furtive' or deceptive. How to approach, how to build rapport? It is worrisome to attempt, difficult to achieve anything, far from my 'comfort zone', and the fear is that I am wasting my time. Thus, I move, gently toward what, well, makes me uncomfortable :)

Photo: Walkabout, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

a day at the beach

I sat on the beach, collecting stones. I pulled a stone that was already rounded from an ancient sea when the soft sand it sat in turned to stone, ages upon ages ago. I sat because I had lost my thread, and when that happens I need to orient myself to something much bigger. I sat because I had held the hand of a stranger through the last minutes of his life, both of us pawing at the futility of it all. I sat, picking through the stones that fate had assembled beneath me. What countless summers have caressed these stones? Here but a blink, what foolishness I am, meandering between doubt and hope, stumbling about the stones.

Photo: A day at the beach, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom