Re: problem

[Sandy King <sanking@clemson.edu>]

Diana,

You are absolutely right in that going out and doing new work is what 
drives our creative juices. Printing is only interesting for me to 
the extent that it must be mastered, which is challenging. However, 
once mastered the process becomes somewhat boring, and then rote. 
Maybe that is why we like alternative processes. True mastery of many 
of these processes is illusive, and fraught with surprise.

Well, here is the silver lining. After three days of searching I 
finally located the negatives that set off the emotional crisis.

So now I at least have the negatives I was looking for, and am 
somewhat better organized as a result of the search!!

Sandy




At 1:18 PM -0500 2/4/08, Diana Bloomfield wrote:
> Hi Sandy,
>
> Well, I sometimes wonder that, too-- if to "simply burn it all and 
> start from scratch" might be best.  When I'm not home, but in town, 
> and I hear fire alarms in the area, I always worry that it's my 
> house that's burning to the ground while I'm out buying eggplant or 
> clementines.  It's like this big dark cloud that hovers over me, 
> until I finally get home and see that all is well.  Still . . . I 
> often wonder what I would do if all my negatives, prints, and 
> digital files were destroyed in this imaginary house fire, or what 
> I'll do if that big satellite that's gonna fall from the sky next 
> month or whenever, will drop right on my house.  I have to admit, if 
> I lost all my negatives, etc, I'd be really upset for a while; on 
> the other hand, I think it sure would provide a nice clean fresh 
> start.  Maybe we (I) wouldn't feel so restricted in what and how I 
> chose to photograph and print if the slate were wiped totally clean. 
> That's what I wonder, anyway.
>
> On the other hand, I like that I have so many negatives that I never 
> have to go out and photograph anymore if I don't want to.  Like you, 
> I think I could just sit here and print the rest of my life, and 
> that would be fine.  When I think about doing that, though, I get 
> worn out.  I think I've realized that the part I like best about 
> photography is the actual photographing.  Deep down, I don't think I 
> ever really liked to print.  If I had an amazing space in which to 
> work, then maybe I'd like it better.  Then again, that would just 
> put more pressure on me to print, because I have this great space.
>
> The hard drive on my 1 year old laptop crashed last week, and I lost 
> everything on it.  I had a new hard drive put in, and I found it 
> really liberating to start fresh.  The person who replaced the hard 
> drive gave me a card for one of these companies that will try to 
> reclaim your files for you.  I kept the card but decided not to do 
> anything about it.  After a week, I can't even remember what I had 
> on it, so I figured that was similar to keeping old clothes that you 
> never wear, just hanging around in your closet taking up space.  If 
> you haven't worn them in over a year, you ought to just bite the 
> bullet and get rid of them.
>
> So, yeah, I have similar problems.  My main problem is that I could 
> sit around and think about this stuff all day and never get anything 
> done.  It's quite a dilemma, for sure.
>
> Good luck with your storage system, or lack of, Sandy. :)
>
> > Diana,
> >
> > Not sure why others are not posting but in my case it is not 
> > because of happy printing. I am in something of a major funk 
> > regarding the dismal lack of organization in my system of negative 
> > storage. I have been going through hundreds of negatives that were 
> > not well organized and filed over a period of many years and trying 
> > to put them into some kind of category or date system. The task is 
> > quite overwhelming and makes me realize that even I never make 
> > another negative I already have so many that I would be lucky to 
> > print even 1/10 of them.  And after several days of doing this I 
> > still have not located the lost or misplaced negatives that set all 
> > of this off.
> >
> > The whole experience has made me quite depressed and I am starting 
> > to wonder if it would not be best to simply burn all of them and 
> > start from scratch. Is anyone else having similar problems, or is 
> > this just a side effect of my bi-polar tendencies?
> >
> > Sandy