When I started my photography blog back in 2016, I did so with two intentions. First, I wanted a platform other than social media (i.e., Facebook or Instagram) where I could share and display my photographs. Additionally, I wanted a platform where I could discuss my thoughts on photography or share the story behind an image or series of images I took. After I got the site designed and photographs added, I started graduate school. Although I continued to take pictures, the responsibility of maintaining a photography website and writing a regular blog post quickly got forgotten. Although I am still writing my dissertation, I am finally to a point where I can begin thinking about photography and my photography website/blog again.

Going out and taking pictures is still somewhat of a slow process for me; not only because of the dissertation but also because of the Covid-19 pandemic (I am a little nervous about just walking around with a camera in my hand when we are supposed to be under a stay at home order).   In the meantime, I have been going through and organizing images, editing, and starting to think about creating photobooks. Well, actually, I have already finished a photo book, and I am super excited to share it!!!!

One group of images I have been working a lot with are those from our 2018 Europe trip. During our 6 week adventure in Europe, I took around 88,000 pictures (not counting short movies and iPhone photographs) – that came out to about 4 terabytes of data. Not only was the trip amazing, but it offered some fantastic opportunities for photography. While I produced some excellent images on that trip, I also learned a lot too. To date, less than 5% of those images have been edited. However, I have gone through all of the images, organized them, and backed them up on our server. My goal for this summer is to work through editing all of the images and produce several photobooks detailing our trip.

So, what do I want this blog to be about? I want it to be about my journey as a photographer. I believe each image or group of images has a story, and I want to tell those stories.  Sometimes those stories are about the images’ content. While other times they are about the experience of capturing the image or about editing. The afterlife of the image also fascinates me – how images are stored, displayed, and shared – but it can also be challenging, and I want to discuss/air my experiences with those challenges. Finally, professionally, as a historian/academic, I am fascinated with the history of photography and its use as a tool in research for various disciplines.

So here’s to photography, images, and the stories behind it and about it!!!