I’ve begun a portrait project: 365 portraits in 2011. At the end of the year I’ll make a 20X30 poster... something I’ve had in my mind for awhile. The portraits will be black and white. I am asking permission of people whose portraits I am taking, so I won’t be breaking any laws if I decide to do something public with the poster at the end of the year. I’m carrying around a permission slip (I prefer the language of school) which I will ask people I don’t know to sign. When I take a portrait of someone I know, I won’t ask for a signature. If I ask you if I can take your picture sometime in the next 358 days, you won’t hurt my feelings if you say no; but I’ll be grateful if you let me do it.
I decided to shoot myself today. I came across a self-portrait I did in 1990 with an old typewriter. I brought it up-to-date by adding gray... digitized the 1990 image and touched it up on my computer. Then I used the timer on my camera to get my photo du jour.
It seems appropriate to ask Emily Dickinson to say her piece. I was tempted as all getout to change the last word in Ms. Dickenson's poem from "bog" to "blog," but I was afraid lightening would strike me.

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!