Easy come, easy go…
Easy come, easy go is the opposite of everything for me right now. I’ve had an issue with Lightroom, the main program I use for editing photos, that is also a catalog program - basically the catalog and it’s attendant files got confused, and all of the image previews disappeared. While it’s quite possible to rebuild them (takes forever), what it means for me is that when I open the program, most of what I see is grey boxes with file names…the photo files themselves are intact, on a variety of external hard drives, but unless I remember the year/month/day I shot something, there is no way to find it other than opening folder after folder after folder and scrolling through the images.
It’s like if iTunes got confused, and you could see your song files, numbered, with no artist, album, or song title, but you needed to put together a playlist. Or like a library being renovated, so all the books are in boxes…the book you need is there, but it’s in a brown box, like a thousand others.
Is there a way to find things? Yes and no…Adobe Bridge does help a bit because it’s somewhat faster than opening folders but also pretty useless. Is there a way to fix/rebuild? Yes! But it’s tedious and if I’m going to do that much work, it’s tempting to just start over, re-import all the files, build new previews, and go from there…I guess I need to think about what to do next.
In the meantime, I did a shoot the other day for my Burns Park project, and it was lovely and terrifying. I forget sometimes, since the technical side of photography is generally easy at this point, that the other sides of photography can be challenging, emotional, and intense. And there is just nothing like it - for me at least. Nothing easier than taking a picture, and sometimes nothing harder.
So I leave you with one of my favorite quotes ever-
”Who but an artist fierce to know—not fierce to seem to know—would suppose that a live image possessed a secret? The artist is willing to give all his or her strength and life to probing with blunt instruments those same secrets no one can describe in any way but with those instruments’ faint tracks.
One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.
Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.” - Annie Dillard