Everyday assignments can be filled with wonder, but only if you put yourself in the right frame of mind. I've been working full force on "While You Were Gone," and I find myself conserving my energy a little just to make it through these crazy past weeks. Babies are being born, or adopted, people are calling me with new stories, and just as I feel like I'm in the full swing of it, I see the end of the project looming, at least according to the timeline of the paper. How will I ever get it all done? Sometimes anything other than this project feels like an intrusion, a distraction, though daily assignments are why I have the luxury to work on this project in the first place. I've gotten good at making clean, pleasing pictures fast, so I can spend hours with my military families, but that's not always the ideal way to work.
I took a few hours the other day to linger at an assignment-- to talk, to sit, to see, to listen and to make a few pictures. He is 94, a veteran of Pearl Harbor and a long-time resident of Portsmouth, Va. who was planning to make a pecan pie that afternoon. Oh, I wanted to stay, but other assignments called for my attention. Daily work-- the routine of it, the fresh chance every day to make something beautiful out of the world around you-- makes me thankful to be a newspaper photographer, even if I'm feeling a little crazy these days.
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