Seeking the Picture

...I didn't realize all of that at the time. But I knew what had just happened. Once again something had stopped me. I'd taken it in, composed and waited -- the external life of encountered experience and the imaginative inner life of an individual photographer. It is at this intersection of the inner and outer worlds that the life of a photographe begins.

It often begins imperfectly. Life rarely represents fully finished photographs. An image evolves, often from a single strand of visual interest -- a distant horizon, a moment of light, a held expression. Over time I grew interested in these first imperfect impressions. The reveal what initially stopped me. A few had a rough vitality. All contained evidence of the photograph to be... -- Sam Abell