Twins in Tree

Welcome back.  I have to admit, blogging, tweeting, emailing, texting, is very strange to me. I enjoy letter writing, so blogging feels somewhat familiar, but yet very strange. It’s as if I am writing a private letter to a public audience…

Anyway, I hope you find reason to enjoy my innermost desires, etc.

This spread from the book brings to mind several things.

First: the picture.  It is quite old, shot in 1999.  I still like it. I have a problem with actually liking my pictures—it usually takes me a few years, or at least a few months, before I start to tentatively embrace them.  But this one, surprisingly, I liked initially.

This photograph was actually quite serendipitous.  These are two very funny Canadian twins who are not really models at all, but agreed to model for me for a period of time.  Unfortunately, they no longer model, and this tree no longer exists.  It was an opportune moment to get all of them together at the right time.

Second: the layout. Many people have commented on the fact that my books have type with the photographs. I have had to spend some time in introspection to understand why I fell that the right text, rather than limiting the photograph, enhances the photograph. I was an English and Religious Studies Major; I have a love for English and the literary word. When I was younger, I just assumed I would be a novelist.  I had the sentiment but not the skill.  Maybe this attraction to text with photographs is a leftover version of my dormant desire to be a novelist. Regardless, I have always tried to integrate some writing—humorous or straightforward—with the photographs.  As I am a visual person, design—how the text is laid out and how it relates to the photograph—is very important.  It goes back to that idea of classical thinking where proportion and composition must all fit together.  The text has to complement the photograph.  It cannot be extraneous, superfluous, or unnecessary.  Somehow, someway, they all must work together seamlessly.

Third: Mr. S.  Over the last few years—in my books, on my website and in my newsletters—we have created a Mr. S character, which in some cases is a loose personification of me. Mr. S is an anachronism in the twenty-first century.  He is eccentric and original.  All things I strive to emulate rather than avoid.