Wittgenstein in his extended discussion of 'following a rule' talks about the feeling that you have, 'I know how to go on.' You just know. You get it. You can be wrong, of course. You think you have it but you don't, still. The proof is in the execution.
I know how to go on. I have shot less films in my entire life than some photographers shoot (or used to shoot, before digital) in a week. I have a 500ml bottle of Kodak Photo-Flo wetting agent (1+200) which I bought in 1970 and there's at least another 50 films to go before the bottle is finished.
This time it is different. These pages (this is the 4th!) have helped. My interest isn't humanistic. I know that now. It isn't pictorial (despite many lapses). It isn't an interest in abstraction or composition. I was clear enough about that in Metaphysics of the Photograph. The problem was I couldn't see a way to work. There's got to be a better way than walking randomly looking for you don't know what.
There is a way, and it is so simple. Find a place and stay there. It doesn't matter whether you can see 'photographic possibilities' or not. Give it time, and you will see them. The pictures will come to you. Sit or stand, whatever works for you, and start looking. Start thinking.
The first image was taken canal-side in Newark-Upon-Trent. This is further down the canal. The second shadow is my daugher Judith.
And here she is again in a strange reflection shot. Or is it? I remember seeing something similar in Lee Friedlander. A reflection that somehow couldn't be a reflection, but you couldn't work it out. Because it's a double-exposure (unintentional, in my case).
Serendipity.
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