on a chang? d’heure et on n’est qu’? 2053

i couldn’t see things that way before i read your comment, but i like that sort of irony, even though time doesn’t matter much anymore as soon as i look through a viewfinder.
i want to thank you, even when those two words don’t seem to express much of what i feel like saying for your comment. i’m completely unable to realize by myself all that you said, which is probably better even though i find frustrating my lack of distance and discernment about what i do. i can only tell if a picture is bad, should-have-been-better or good. it’s frustrating as well somehow to never ever be able to see my pictures the way that other people may see them…the way you seem to see them.
so thank you for your words, really.

I want to think that you are humble and modest and that you don’t just see your pictures as being “Good”, “Average” or “Poor”.
You have a Gift, something that was given to you by a superior being (Call it God, or whatever): You are able to see things; not just with your eyes, like most of us, not just with you heart, like some of us, but with your soul, your guts, with every inch of your sensitivity.
You have another Gift: Sometimes, not only you see things, but you are also able to capture them, to steal them, to make them yours for eternity, just by pressing a small button on a camera.
Now, to me, this is a miracle. You don’t seem to be taking beautiful pictures by accident, like 99.999999% of photographers. You take beautiful pictures on a consistent basis.
Okay, let’s say that, consciously, you don’t realise that. Isn’t there a little voice in you head that says: “I am on a mission. I can do something that others can’t. I am going to work very hard, and perfect my technique, and master my camera, until I know that my pictures are not just a piece of paper, but something much higher, much deeper, something that other people universally admire”?
Why are you taking pictures? To make money? (I don’t think so. You know how hard and unfair it is!)
Can you stop taking pictures? Probably not. Why?

photolondon, the truth is, a very few of my pictures make it to “outstanding” to my eyes. the last that came the closest to that was in the “one day 49” series. i’m probably my worse judge.
i admire your insight about the little voice. yes, there is something telling me to just go on and make pictures, and show what i see and how i see everything. this isn’t just about making something that will be universally admired ; whether people will like a picture or not, i just wish it would be able to touch them, shake them, make them feel something, just like making pictures touches me, shakes me sometimes, and makes me feel something. what it is, i don’t know, and i can’t put together the exact words to answer to the whys. somehow i hope that if i never stop, that if i discover more about what i take pictures of, it will answer the questions that you asked and that i ask myself, too.

yes, that’s what i meant, to know that the answers are in my pictures, cause i don’t believe i could find words anyway. besides, i know that viewers might have a lot better insight in what i do than i could have — frustrating yet reassuring somehow.

…and yes, my happiness comes from it indeed. when i said i’m frustrated sometimes, it’s when i read comments like yours, thoughtful and insightful, and that i realize that there’s a world i can’t grasp in my pictures and that viewers can.
but it also shows that maybe i’ve touched something in them, like you said…and that alone is able to make me go on. so thanks again for telling me all this, obviously you know what it means to me…