The house is in a whirlwind of anticipation. My wife and my soon to be 16-year-old daughter are running to and fro buying fabric, candies, decorations, etc., all in preparation for the most ghoulish of holidays – Halloween. You would think the Messiah is close at hand with all the excitement! I can smell wonderful things being cooked in the kitchen. Cakes, cookies and other assorted sweets are being made for a party for friends and company next week. Soon the sewing machine will be humming, whirring out yards of cloth to make my daughter into a beautiful and elaborate Snow White. The metamorphosis is beginning and by next week, it will be complete. My little, rotten 16-year-old daughter will become an angelic Snow White for a day. She will probably still want very little to do with her father afterwards. So here is the problem as I see it. Not to be a naysayer or a Mr. Scrooge, but I hate Halloween. I have never liked it. Even as a little kid all dressed up as some robot or motorcycle, I was so uncomfortable asking for treats. Why couldn't they just give them to me without all the hassle? I don't understand all the fuss. The last thing I want to be is someone other than myself. It is exactly my problem in reverse. I want to be more of me, not less. Escaping into becoming some bucolic angel or hobgoblin doesn't make me any happier; it just feels all wrong. I need to stand sure footed in my own shoes, grounded to the earth below, seeking with a little help of Sigmund and Co. to come to grips more with the me that is wiser, bigger and stronger. Maybe this year I should simply beg for treats not as some angelic Mr. Hyde, but just as plain old boring me on stilts. Well the festivities have begun, the autumn leaves are falling, the smell of wood burning in fireplaces is in the air, and I can feel all the happy little kids around me dreaming of all the treats to come next week. This un-bemused photographer will fight to the death to keep any pumpkins off his head at least until next year.

"Enough! Enough!" yowls my imaginary woof, Oklahoma. I can finally see by imagining his eyes and visioning his head on the ground with his paws over his ears, that I must cease. It is time to stop my ramblings for a while about my ontological, existential, physiological disorder of an upbringing, and bring us back to reality with some real meat (preferably filet) and potatoes of photography. No more psycho-babble, let's get right to the heart of the matter of my pictures and of photography in general. So to start my down to earth foray for a while, i thought it only fitting that I interview myself with some pertinent life affecting, photo directed questions that have been posed to me over the years by you, dear readers. This will be my way to get me back to focusing clearly and directly on photography, through my pictures and see if I can leave all this sissy introspection behind and close this spigot on my emotions, well here goes. Mr. S: In over 40 years of photography do you have one day in particular that you feel was your best? Mr. Smith: Ironically, I do. In the spring of 1976, I was in Jerusalem on a fellowship and was having lunch with the beautiful photographer, Dominique Nabokov. She asked me to accompany her to the Armenian compound for Armenian Orthodox Easter Service. That afternoon was the most photographically productive and exciting day of my life. The church was filled with despair, yet illuminated with light. The light was transcendent and for one of the few times in my life I felt spiritually whole. The light, the people, the experience was the day to remember. Mr. S: This answer brings up another question. What is the source of illumination in your pictures? Or (to be more colloquial) what is your light source? Mr. Smith: Where or how I learned to use light as I do, to this day remains an enigma to me. It is not complicated. In fact, it is so simple, that  it continually surprises me that I find so few people doing it. Everyone feels more is more and I guess I have always felt that less is more. Basically, there are two answers to your question. Firstly, Interiors. This is where the real photographer is exposed. No hiding behind a rock in the great outdoors, but rather exposing yourself in some small space. I have always loved intense directional light. It is not only because it visually appeals to me, but as discussed in earlier blogs, it emotionally seems to reveal or illuminate the person and place in a way that I find satisfying. I almost exclusively use natural light and I like to see the subject as our eyes view it but with more focus and more intent. Even in graduate school I never liked how people lit things or used light. It felt quite banal and unemotional. I always went off on my own tangent and must have…

Columbus hasn't landed yet. He is really close to the shore and we have decided to take the day off to go and meet him. We will be back tomorrow with another installment of the life of Mister S. Until then...

Although the world outside of our enclave in the mid-sixties was filled with America at it's best and most horrific, I, like all good completely egocentric adolescence, was preoccupied with the oncoming, unavoidable, and eventual reality of senior lectures with Mr. Clark. From your first weeks at school, you learned in awe, fear, and sometimes loathing of the power and the glory of Mr. Clark. He was our Senior English teacher, the architect of all truth, grades, and the college application letters. Throughout my years leading up to the fall of 1966, I was mystified at the power of Mr. Clark. Rumors abounded everywhere. Don't mess with the man! He can destroy your college dreams. If he liked you he could make you but no one in my immediate world, except my father, did I hold with such trepidation. One semester my dorm-mate was the bon vivant, world traveler, know it all, speaker of Italian, Thom Steinbeck, the son of the famous John Steinbeck. I can remember one afternoon when the father came to visit the son. The father came slightly early and I sitting alone in my room where he poked his head into the room graciously introduced himself and asked immediately where he could find the famous Mr. Clark. That did it! If John Steinbeck knew who this man was then all my fears must be true. Mr. Clark must have had a direct link to Isaiah, Moses, Jesus, and even Shakespeare. He was the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost all wrapped into one human Trinity. So in the fall of 1965 as my senior year began, classes began in a total blur. All of course, except Mr. Clark's senior English class. I must digress for a moment. On these pages in the past I have made it abundantly clear what a wreck of a child I was. Wealth, style and status, were not the problem. Intelligence, graciousness and wisdom were. Up to this time, keeping with good family tradition I was not a reader of much except a good playboy smuggled into my dorm room. Intellectual curiosity was not a high point in my social upbringing (up to this point)...so besides being an emotional cripple, I was an intellectual nitwit as well. Cars, girls and clothes were the makings of a man what lied beneath either were unknown, uninteresting, or too frightening to look. I can remember my first senior lecture with Mr. Clark as clearly as I remember where I was on that sophomore year day when I heard that President Kennedy was shot. On both occasions a gun went off. The tradition was that after lunch, while all the rest of the school was in study hall, Mr. Clark would take stance in the refectory. From above like Dumbledore with his magic wand, would commence his hour and a half lecture. This little, unattractive, mean spirit of a man, would speak the most glorious words I had ever beheld. There would be a stanza of…

I am drenched. My galoshes are filled to the brim with rain water. I have set out all the pots and pans to catch the drizzling streams. As soon as I dry out I will be back with a new blog post. Until then wish me luck in finding the kitchen to make a soggy sandwich.