Someone once famously compared writing about music to dancing about architecture. I suppose the specific analogy is that the 5 basic ballet positions don’t map well to Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. In any case, I say ‘someone’ because this witticism has been attributed to everyone from Elvis Costello to Igor Stravinsky. To avoid future attribution squabbles and to make sure that I receive my fair share of the t-shirt and bumper sticker revenue, I wish to go on record here and now as the first ever to compare writing about photography to gardening about brain surgery. Or cooking about math. Or maybe miming about poetry. The point is, using words to describe images might seem like a redundant and even hopeless enterprise. Words can exist perfectly well on their own. (See, for example, the works of Douglas Adams.) And good photographs equally stand on their own merits. (See Margaret Bourke-White, W. Eugene Smith, Gregory Crewdson, Sam Abell and Jim Gehrz, to name but a few.) So why combine them? Won’t one dilute the other? Or might not the whole experience have the disappointing flavor of seeing your favorite disc jockey for the first time? “Gee, they sounded much better looking on radio . . .”

Possibly. But in photojournalism, the sub-genre of photography I practice and enjoy most, words and photos are old, if sometimes awkward, friends. Pictures can illustrate a story that is otherwise inexplicable or unbelievable, and words can add deeper meaning and gravity to images that might otherwise be mistaken for just aesthetically pleasing. And another way in which words and photographs complement each other is in recounting the experience of planning, chasing, and making photographs for publication.

When I first hung out my shingle as a freelance photographer and photojournalist, I knew I loved the day-to-day work of shooting. I knew I loved the technology of cameras and computers, and I knew I loved telling stories with photos and seeing those stories published. These were the reasons I gave up more lucrative work to return to my first love. But after a few years, I was surprised to find that something else had gently nudged its way onto the list of core things I loved about my profession. At first, I didn’t notice that I usually came home from an assignment feeling more aware of and connected to the world. I gradually realized that was no coincidence. The places I went, the things I saw, and most of all, the people I met – in short, the overall experience of interacting with the world while doing my job – became as much a part of my love of photography as anything else.

A camera is an entree to places most people don’t see. It provides a kind of social cover for getting to know people faster than is normally considered polite. And while a camera allows the photographer to both participate in and withdraw from the world in front of him, allowing simultaneous empathy and detachment, it is the connections formed, the brief glimpses into other lives and worlds that I remember most from past assignments. And while it might sometimes feel like meditating about spontaneity, it is these connections and glimpses I’ll write about in this blog.