Having too many ideas is my forever curse… but this time it opened a door.
What kind of writing ought to accompany the pictures I'd taken in Paris? Answering that question was impossible.
Lightly fictionalized episodes of adventure (like Roark uses in their delightful
Artifacts Journal), laying out the history of the city in question, or something else? My mind was spinning.
Fast-forward to this vacation in South Beach. What's the best way to spend a week off from work? How about starting a whole new creative project before the current one is even close to finished.
The idea for this Miami project came when I was living there, but I never made the time to shoot it. I couldn't let this opportunity slip away a second time.
And so, your favorite procrastinator friend was weaving through South Beach on a borrowed bike, camera in hand, snapping scooters for yet another photo book project.
Suddenly, a strong common theme of both the Miami and Paris photo books sprang to mind: they're both about what makes a place not just unique, but special.
Laws, culture, landscape, history… Each photo book is an attempt to distill down a city into a perfectly representative subject matter. That won't be apparent from just the photos.
With that, the question of what to write for both photo books was answered in one fell swoop. I'll need to lay out exactly why I think the subjects represent the city so well.
Stories could be a cherry on top, or a means to inspire travel, but the core text of the book will have some explaining to do.
So go ahead, start that new project. Change where you sit, or don't sit at all. Take a bike ride with a camera through a favorite neighborhood.
It won't be procrastinating—your subconscious mind is always hard at work—and it might just open that mental door you've been hammering away at.
See you on the other side,
Josh
