I'll always have 2010

Found Art , Rinconada, NM, March 29, 2005. Still Life as Subject, Photoplace Gallery, Middlebury, VT. The Arrangement, Vermont Photo Place, Essex Junction, VT.  It's Still Life, Rayko Gallery, San Francisco. Point of View, Edgecliff  Press. Single Image Issue, Black and White Magazine.

I peaked too soon. 2010 was the apex of my sleepy photographic career, if not qualitatively certainly quantitatively. Since I need to add past events to my new website, I've just reviewed my roster of shows over the years. The difference between 2010 and the years since is stark. 2010 is the year when my photographs were in galleries all over the country. That and $4.00 will buy you a latte. It was the year in which I lost $10,000 pursuing the glories of fine art photography, whatever fine art means. My businessman's sensibility was destroyed. So, in 2011 I trimmed my sails. I stopped advertising and entering juried exhibitions. Each show was several hundred dollars in submission fees, framing and shipping costs. It adds up. Not to mention I've had nary a sale from a juried show. The predictable result of reducing costs was that sales cratered. But at least I cut my losses to a couple of grand a year. $2,000, I figured, that was tolerable for what had become a hobby. I have yet to speak the word hobby in polite company, but I’m self-aware enough to recognize that reality.

Salt Marsh, Moody Beach, ME, September 27 2007. The Masters Cup, the International Award for Color Photography

Book of Solemnity, Ranchos de Taos, NM, March 18, 2005. The Humble Masterpiece. Taos Center for the Arts.

Lines of Defence, US 64, NM. March 19, 2008. Open Shutter Gallery, Durango, CO.

As I looked back at the plenitude of 2010 I found myself looking at critically the work I submitted that year, work that was shown in galleries and museums in Vermont (2), Texas (2), Colorado (2), Ohio, California (2) New Mexico (2), and London. During one period in 2010 my work was in five concurrent shows. There was so much action that I don't remember the images in some of the shows.

Bridge to Nowhere, San Francisco, August 8, 2009. National Juried Exhibition, Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX.

Until this review If you’d asked me what have been my most successful images of my digital age that started in 2002 I’d have said Good Luck, Vanishing Point and Lines of Defence, the ‘c’ is intentional, I would have been very wrong. Based the on the ultra-active 2010 Found Art wins by a landslide. It tallied three shows and two books, something Good Luck, Vanishing Point and Lines of Defence never accomplished.

The review raised the musical question, how does your newer work stack up to the pearls of the past?

I'll get back to you on that.