Blog About Photography

© Greg Wasserstrom

Merry Christ­mas, every­body. I hope you’re enjoy­ing qual­ity time with your fam­ily, think­ing about the birth of Christ, etc. And if you don’t cel­e­brate Christ­mas, you know, like me, then I hope you enjoy the day, few days, off from work or school or what­ever it is that occu­pies your time. Here’s what’s been occu­py­ing mine:

• Last week, after about 9 months of “intern­ing,” I began work as a con­tribut­ing edi­tor over at Won­kette, Gawker’s polit­i­cal site. I finally have a reg­u­lar gig that also hap­pens to be sort of a dream job! So, you know, go and check out my hand­i­work and stuff, even if you hate pol­i­tics! So we do! Mine are the posts that say “Greg Wasser­strom” next to them and for the moment, I write 5 per day. To cel­e­brate, I’m writ­ing this entry in the style of one of my ubiq­ui­tous head­line roundups. [Won­kette]
• Tiny Vices included me in a recent update, took me like more than a month to find out about it. Also, I friended Tim Bar­ber on Face­book and OMG we’re totes friends now. [Tiny Vices]
• Finally stopped hold­ing up the entire Fjord project. Opps! Sorry guys! [Fjord]
• Web­site tweak and a cou­ple of new pho­tographs. [Home]

I think that’s every­thing. So, Happy Hol­i­days, Happy New Year,

© Greg Wasserstrom

I tin­kered with the new look of my site a bit more as well as the pho­tographs included in The Dol­drums and I’m happy with the results. You can check that out at greg​wasser​strom​.com. Sub­tle changes, and I car­ried the pink through to the blog. Looks ok, I think though I want to redo this entire thing. At the moment I dont really have the tech­ni­cal exper­tise or the time — plus I should focus­ing on more posts!

Also, I’m going to start post­ing more of my writ­ing which hope­fully won’t bore you too much (I’ll illus­trate when­ever pos­si­ble). I’m real­iz­ing, con­trary to what I have said in the past, that my pas­sions for pho­tog­ra­phy, writ­ing and pol­i­tics are all com­ing from the same place. It’s all the same pur­suit — it’s all obser­va­tional, descrip­tive, revelatory.

And this just occurred to me. The pho­to­graph I’ve included in this post is a newish one, from The Dol­drums, and I’m quite happy with it. But a pho­to­graph as sat­is­fy­ing as this one isn’t with­out com­pli­ca­tion. When pho­tog­ra­phers take images like this one, are we not lit­er­ally tak­ing it? What I mean is, since I didn’t this scene up myself, since I came across it in some­one else’s apart­ment, was it not their cre­ative sen­si­bil­ity that makes this shot inter­est­ing? Cer­tainly, I com­posed the pho­to­graph, chose what to include and exclude, but doesn’t that make it a col­lab­o­ra­tion? Can I really take credit for it?

And finally, if i may say so: I’m very happy you’re here. Writ­ing this blog has been tremen­dously reward­ing for me in more ways that I can recount. The rea­son for this isn’t any­thing I’m doing at all — it’s you. Inter­act­ing with you is won­de­ful and I’m thrilled to get to know so many peo­ple I’ve com­mu­ni­cated with through this forum in the real world. This whole thing means a lot to me, so please don’t go away!

Her hair is up, tied up some­how, I can’t really describe it, but it’s like a lit­tle girl’s might be. It’s this kind of muddy, inde­ci­sive shade of brown. White wires come down from the ear­buds she’s got in her ears, her head bobs, her body sways back and forth, lightly, com­pletely asyn­chro­nously with the rhythem­less flute music drift­ing across the sub­way plat­form. Her coat is white even though it’s the first day of fall and she has a scarf tossed around her neck, its white and black and fuzzy, like TV sta­tic. She looks down at her feet, her toes pointed inward and maybe wrig­gling a bit in her black on black can­vass shoes.

Another time I fell in love on the sub­way, I was com­ing up out of the sta­tion in a part of town I only visit when I need to buy some­thing for the apart­ment. A girl was walk­ing ahead of me, there was a cer­tain some­thing to her stride, and again those black can­vass shoes. It was still warm then, or I should say, much warmer than it is now, and her skin shim­mered slightly. On the street we went dif­fer­ent direc­tions. I turned around to watch her round the cor­ner. How pleas­ant that she’d done the same.

Back on the plat­form, the girl in the white coat she steps for­ward, peer­ing down the track, check­ing for the train. It’s com­ing, and then it arrives. I loose sight of her. I write about her from memory.