photography lessons

I haven't really met anyone since I moved to Seattle, which isn't surprising. I tell people who ask that I've just been settling in. I'm not even sure what that really means. It's not like I have a lot of stuff. Everything is unpacked and I spend the evenings walking around Wallingford--did I get that right? I'm still getting used to the neighborhoods--or watching people from my window. It's a nice studio.

It didn't take me too long to find work. I guess I've met some people there but it's still a working relationship if you'll pardon the pun. None of them really know me. I think more important, none of them know anybody who knows me. I've got a chance to start over. I can reinvent myself. I'm going to start with photographs.

I'm not very good at changing my behavior. It's something you can only do a few times, I think. I did it a few times, when I was younger. Maybe that's just because it was the only way I could hide back then. Something happened and I'd change so that it would stop, or I'd change to get away from it, or something. It seemed so easy at the time. It was hardly even a conscious choice. It went something like--you know the saying "I became what I always hated?" Is that even a saying, or just a song?

Nobody takes pictures of me. Maybe I'm not photogenic but I think it's just the people I hang out with. But there's a few out there. It's hard to get a picture of who I am from them, if you'll pardon the pun. But that's how you get to know people now. You go to Facebook. You look at photos. You piece it together. You figure out what type of person they are. And then that's just what you think of them. Once you've figured out what kind of person someone is it doesn't matter what they do or act like. That's just who they are.

That's what love at first sight is all about, of course. You see someone and you fall in love and then there's nothing they can do to change that, until something happens that forces you to see.

So I've been carefully going through and finding photos that make me look like the kind of person people here will like. Adding this photo, deleting that one. Captioning them in just such a way. I'm building a new identity here. I get to start over without starting over. I feel sort of like I'm cheating, because not everyone gets this chance. But everyone deserves it.