Originally posted on Substack: The Study of Light, July 29, 2025
On the occasion of my sixty-second birthday, I am starting a blog about photography, life, and light.
Recently a friend asked me what I was going to do with all those photos. “The whole lot of them, or just these specific ones?” I asked him. He meant the specific ones, those I took of the veterinarian at work. But in the meantime, I had fixed my mind on “the whole lot of them.” Cardboard boxes in my garage. Framed prints hanging on friends’ walls. Newspaper clippings from 1987. And a dozen external hard drives, holding some million digital files. What am I going to do with all of these photos?
It’s a question for an old person, or a person who is about to be old. I have photographed weddings for couples who intended to make their own wedding album, but did not, and then they were divorced. I have made images of flowers and sunsets, even though we have plenty of flowers and sunsets to look at now. Photos of products that have been discontinued. Images of the team that disbanded. There are also strong images in the stack, ones I enjoy seeing again. But why do I have all these photos? What will I do with them?
I’ve actually been thinking about this for a long time. Our political moment, I believe, calls us each to speak up for what is right and just, and for what is democratic and American. If you are a religious person, you have yet another opportunity to live your values. Since I won’t do well to go on about politics, explicitly, I’ve decided to write about something I should know something about — photography. And since “it’s all connected,” politics and religion and culture will be implied anyway. Thus, I begin today, this blog, which I call “The Study of Light.” It’s a name that works well as a definition of photography, but it is suggestive of so much more.
Please, please, take a minute to read, to share, to respond. If you enjoy it, subscribe (on Substack). If you don’t enjoy it, subscribe anyway, because the next post might be something completely different. Raise your own questions, agree, or disagree. Maybe we’ll all learn something.
With or without a camera, I want only to study light.
