the first excuse i have for not being here for so long on this forum, is that right before this long trip to Brazil/Mexico , my beloved 12" laptop crashed to the floor ..reduced to only allowing me to see the much hated spinning color wheel..much to my chagrin, i somehow have become laptop dependent..no laptop = no dowloading, no blogging…
then the trip itself…how in the world did i think i could make the 9 hour flight to Sao Paulo, followed by a 7 hour car ride in the heavy rain to the colonial beach town of Paraty and with only 20 minutes to spare, put on the opening show for the photo fest??
i then had to put on a one day seminar, get back in the car and rush over the same route to the Sao Paulo airport where i swear snaked the longest immigration line (full length of the airport) i have ever had the misery to stand in to get on the flight to Mexico City, where i then had to spend 24 hours in the airport hotel with the internet down, and then finally finally to my class here in San Miguel de Allende where i have very limited internet access….(yes yes yes, i promise to catch up on all comments by the weekend…no internet before saturday)
am i making excuses for not being here to chat with you for the last week??? absolutely i am….are they "good excuses" ?? maybe, maybe not….i generally am not excuse tolerant with other people…as a photo workshop teacher, i spend a whole lot of time listening to student excuses, accepting very few of them, and now here i am doing the same thing…making excuses to you…
i think it is probably fair to say that most of us tend to "make excuses" for a wide variety of our behavior patterns… ones that may not be acceptable to our colleagues, family or "significant other"…..but surely, some of them must be legit??…and it is probably also fair to say that all of us could have moved our work a little further forward at least, but we made excuses of why we did not do this book or that book or somehow did not finished such and such a project or why we just did not have enough time to totally finish a particular body of work….
how about you … have you ever made excuses to your own detriment??? or are all of your excuses as good (or bad) as the one i just made to you???
It seems to me that to make a big deal about “no excuses,” one also has to negate the whole idea of happy accidents, those things that turn good photos into wonderful photos. I maintain that every great work of art has a happy accident in it, something, for instance, the photographer didn’t notice when he clicked the shutter.
Just as you can’t take credit for that, neither can you can you take responsibility for every little thing.
This is not, however, to say that preparation doesn’t mitigate certain unfortunate potentials.
Suppose someone had a camera pointed at the podium and clicked right as the computer was falling…
Good morning all,
Michael
David – When does the cross country class trip start? No excuses. :)
Class trip? We won’t have to sing Kumbaya from here to wherever we’re going, will we? Because if we are, my gall bladder is starting to hurt, I can feel it starting to hurt right now.
Akaky, my man!
Love your vinegar!
Sidney
glenn: ;))))))))))…
hair of the dog sort brother, hair of the dog ;))))
martin: that’s it, indeed, for ALL of us and for EVERYONE: your next drink is on me!…
b
I was making excuses but yesterday I sat down and edited 2 stories I shot and plan to submit. Im going to go shoot one more today and then make a decision on the sybmission. I kept putting it off because there was a lot to do but with the deadline looming, I had to get off my ass and get cracking
no matter if the excuses are good or not, such posts are brilliant (they bring magnum photographers down to mankind level big way ;-D)
Dan’s post says it all. What could you have done better? No need to make excuses, you are human.
Enjoy the day, for you and don’t worry about your readers.
RONY…
yes, bangkok at the end of this month…a workshop with my lifetime friend, james nachtwey…
BOB…
usually at the end of december i am with my family for the holidays in colorado…my mother and sister live in durango…are we gong to miss again???
LILIAN…
it is nice to have you here…perhaps we will meet on my next trip to Brazil, which will be soon enough…
CHIEKO….
good thoughts…yes, late students and late starting classes are annoying to me also….
DAN..
i really enjoyed Paraty and the whole festival atmosphere…too bad i had to leave so quickly…thanks for your kind words…the only reason to teach is to receive this type of comment….
MARTIN…
i just want to wish you a safe and pleasant trip to Cuba…you will fall in love…..i look forward to seeing your Cuba work at some point soon…
MICHAEL…
yes, i know what you mean…i have heard since i had my computer disaster, that there are now “break away” cables which would have totally saved my computer….nobody got the shot!!!
KELLY, AKAKY…
no, no NOT a class trip!!! but, a serious “road trip” with some very good photogs who really want to do a journal style book of the trip…maybe we go from new york to los angeles…or istanbul to paris….anyway, just thinking out loud….big bus….8 students….group dynamic so so important…freestyle travel…do what we want to do , when we want to do it…concensus rules….
JONI..
magnum photogs, like all photogs, need to be at “mankind level” to do good work…all of us are flawed and struggle on many levels…doing as good a work as you can possibly do, does help to “soften” the flaws, but accepting your own human nature, is just part of the deal…
JANET….
well, i do not “worry” about my readers, but i certainly have, in this almost one year of writing here on this forum, developed a keen sense for keeping interesting topics for us to discuss…our little community here is cherished by me….good energy comes from the comments of the readers here…and it is your comments that recycle this energy back to me….collaboration personified…..
cheers, david
Hey David, sorry about your computer, but I’m sure you’ve got plenty else to do. I’m pretty amazed that you’re crazy enough to pack so much in to your life and somehow manage to get most of it done. I hear you about not making excuses, but you are in Latin America after all…the land of manana…You can’t expect to keep a New-York kind of adherence to “the plan” in a place where time moves a lot more slowly and the internet is still a privilege, not a right. But I’m sure you know this already. Besides, now you can do all the other things you no longer have an excuse not to do because you had to go attend to your blog:)
Have a couple of beers and think about us:)
CHRIS..
so nice to hear from you chris…remembering good times and i truly loved your new york work…i will indeed have a couple of beers if you insist…off tomorrow for a couple of days doing absolutely nothing on a mexican beach somewhere with one of my old college buddies…please come back and visit me when you can…..and, as you know, i am totally up for seeing any new work you may have…
cheers, david
david:
right now in the plan-stages of x-mas travels (december 21 – 31): either my mom comes (lives in Philly) here or we go south. if we go south, the plan was to stay in the city for 2 days, meaning a visit to the harvey bunker ;))…but, nothing definitive, i might post-pone until late jan instead, as I dont want to make the journey down unless u r in town, since we the trip in sept-oct was shanghai’d by the russian immigration officials and their treatment of marina and dima…so……i’ll send u an email when you return from R&R time on the playa del sol ;))))…
cheers
bob
hey david, thanks so much, and thanks for posting my stuff, it was nice to get some good feedback. I’m thinking of coming up to NYC and shooting some more, those photos are really growing on me and I want more! probably around the 15th or 16th until around Thanksgiving. You going to be around? Have fun on the beach! We’re still having the longest Indian Summer ever down here…makes it hard to get anything done…how’s that for an excuse?
there are no useful excuses. Since we find time to fight and be miserable, we should allow ourselves the minutes to be happy and make others happy. We should alocate the instances when we behave as we are. Excuses are a way not to live what we ‘commissioned’ ourselves to live.
at the same time, it is a means of escapism. but they never add anything valuable to our lives. i find myself using it as a tool of escaping stress.
An actual road trip from the host of the road_trip?
Sweet. Nice idea.
If you need someone who can navigate and bring Serbian trumpet CDs?
As for excuses, did you ever find that when you said “aww to heck with it” and did the thing somehow/anyhow/anyway that you learned something new?
I guess its better to say despite (problem) than because of (problem). Its just not always possible.
I’m in for this road trip.
Meanwhile, what is the current login and password for the digital railroad site?
I emailed Michael C- but have gotten no answer.
Thanks.
Michael
DAVID, I uploaded 13 new images. Nine are a little story; the other four, I just like. I didn’t manage to get them in my own named folder, so they may be floating around loose. They are named and numbered, though. Let me know if this is problematic.
I’m working on getting to New York. Mostly, I have to find a place to stay which I’m working on.
This blog certainly is quiet….kind of spooky……..
Michael
WooooOOOO!!!
It must be halloween’s influence. Its slightly easier to feel on top of the conversation the way things are. Major respect to anyone who can keep up with hundreds of comments on a single post.