Vemödalen

I am suffering from a crisis of time. My photography has been the only thing keeping me sane for a while now but I'm struggling to give very much attention to it at all at the moment. I didn't get out for lunch until quite late this afternoon and by then, on a really grey day, the light was fading fast. I saw this shot today, realised that it was Dereliction Thursday (The Avid Lensman is such a star!), and called it a day without even trying to see what was happening on the street.

I don't like to be prescriptive with my photography. I prefer to react to what and who I happen to come across as each day unfolds. I try to be true to blip as a journal as far I can be. So it has to be stated that I don't feel any sense of dereliction today. On the contrary, I've had an incredibly busy and productive day. I'm actually buzzing a bit - although I know that won't last for long. The only tenuous link I can find here is in a dereliction to duty as far as the blip community is concerned. I'm barely engaging with anyone here at the moment.

I often find that when I'm tired, stressed and run down I get quite cynical about things, cynical about life, the universe and everything really. I've even found myself getting quite cynical about photography this week. When I saw the picture that won the prestigious Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize this year my first reaction was incredulity, the immediate thought being that it had more to do with who the photographer was than the picture itself. That response should be taken to say more about me and my state of mind than the quality of the winning entry. I think the judges are possibly making a statement about how we should stretch our understanding of what a portrait can be. The whole notion of judging one great portrait over another is all a bit of a nonsense anyway. I can only imagine they have stirred up a lot of debate - which has to be a good thing.

I possibly get overwhelmed by the impression that every photograph we take has already been taken. How is it possible to be original any more when billions of pictures are being captured every day? And then I came across this wonderful and inspirational three minute short called Vemödalen (“the frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist") from a brilliant web channel called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. It helped me find some perspective. It's definitely worth watching.