Exit Sign

I just left a workshop at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies. I attended a daylong blitz with photographer Ernesto Bazan. My mind is full of ideas and confusions.

For one thing, I am thinking about the use of the full frame. Do all parts of the photograph - left and right, up and down, close up and background - work as one complete whole? It's a demanding task that's harder to achieve than it may seem. The color of a coat, the way light falls on a cheek, the sign above a store can ruin everything, to say nothing of exposure, composition, or point of view.

The other thing that I am stuck thinking about is mystery. To conjure mystery is another demanding task, but, that too must be contained in the image. How do you create that? Who knows. When it's there, it's obvious, but how it got there is not so clear.

Today is a beautiful and sunny Friday and I am not quite able to leave for the street. The thoughts from the workshop block me like this chair that sits empty beside the door.