Yesterday I lucked into a little photography project that opened my eyes and mind and caused me to rethink the title of my BLOG: The Way I See It. The project: photographing a Duncan Phyfe table for my friend Ed Jirjis. We put the table on the floor in the middle of his garage so I could move around it and find exactly the right angle for the photograph. I found the best angle and got the pictures I was sure would show the table to best advantage. Later when I looked at the image on my computer monitor, I could just barely “see” the table that I thought was beautiful as I moved around it in Ed’s garage.The stuff in Ed’s garage is better organized than things are in my own garage. It is definitely not a messy environment. I was surprised that I could just barely see the table in the picture because my eyes were
overwhelmed by all the other “stuff." So I subtracted everything from the picture but the table. What a difference in the way we see the world when we find a way to simplify... How could I not think about Henry David Thoreau and his attempt to “Simplify, Simplify.”

He said, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”