Trask Avenue

I love seeing people just being themselves, going about their business, living their lives. Trying to capture those moments, especially with folks I don’t know, is one of my favorite photographic pastimes. Every now and then I’ll catch a person in such a way that extravagant tales from their life, things they do and how they think, immediately fill my head. It can be the smallest detail or the totality of what I see which sets it off. Posture, expression, clothing, accessories or something unusual or simply unexpected. Whatever it is – and it differs from person to person, photo to photo – sparks my imagination with triumphs and sorrows, deeds and misdeeds. I construct elaborate pasts and fascinating futures. The permutations are endless.

You’d think by this stage of life this type of activity would no longer jazz me. You’d think by now I would readily accept that we each bop along living our own unique existence and, as a result, intuitively process and dismiss these frivolous brain flutterings brought on by a millisecond of happenstance. Like noticing a butterfly on the periphery, finding it gone when you turn, and resuming whatever it was you were doing without giving it another thought. But that doesn’t happen. My mind still animates these detailed scenarios and still conjures these fanciful adventures. I hope it always will.