I talk a lot in my write-ups about loneliness. I guess that the obvious reason is that I am a very lonely person. Maybe we choose photography for that reason, because part of us feels most at home on our own and in some ways, that is how we usually find ourselves. Photographers, like me, are creatures of solitude. We have trudged our way through this life alone and we have found ourselves, wherever we may be, in a state of isolation. This is where we live, this is how we breathe, this is who we are. But is it what we really want? Probably not. What we probably want is for someone to pull us close to our hearts and to love us completely, no matter what our flaws. We want them to love us on our good days and our not so good days and to remind us, as we have almost certainly forgotten, that we are special. We want warmth, we want compassion, we want to feel that we belong. Some of us already have that, some of us yearn for it. Some of us have the potential of that but that which gets in the way is the fear of having it. It was alone, as always, that I found myself standing on the edge of the world last night. I wasn’t alone for long, as I bumped into a lovely Dutch guy by the name of (insert Dutch name here). Seriously, he did tell me his name, but it had far too many syllables for me to remember. But what a lovely guy. Normally when photographers bump into each other at a place of beauty, they greet each other with a derisory grunt and then continue to compare techniques and cameras. But that isn’t how it was last night. We stood there together, grabbing shots of an amazing sunset, and talked about everything and anything. I have to say, this was one of my better photographic encounters. Maybe we are all alone, but we are alone together.
The Old Rocks
