The Forced March

This photography project had two sources of inspiration. One was the thought that I was able to walk the streets of Paris, taking hundreds of photographs, but didn't seem to have the capacity to do so at home. The other was the motivation to become physically active by walking around my neighborhood and city. I began twin projects as blogs on the Internet. This one was called, The Forced March, the other, The Dysfunctional Photographer. The title, The Forced March, represents my need for physical activity and, the title, The Dysfunctional Photographer, reflects my need to rediscover the photographic possibilities in day-to-day living. The rules were simple. I had to post one photograph per day on each blog. The photographs could be anything of interest to me and my sensibilities. The origin of the photographs could be within my house or anywhere that I travelled in my day-to-day activity. For the most part I restricted myself to using a point and shoot camera set to program mode. Doing so forced me to concentrate on visual response, instead of the camera. The images were force processed in Photoshop to reflect my interest in exaggerating contrast, detail and color. This is an extension of my experiments in the early 1970s with film-based photography. I will confess to having given up on the film-based concept. The number of copies, reversals, negatives, positives and film masks became overwhelming and impossible to track. I am grateful for the current digital options that allow me to pursue this interest again. Both blogs continued for 100 posts, and were closed when I redirected my time and energy to a renovation project. Prints of the photographs are available. They are printed on an archival art paper using a digital printer. Color, 100 photographs, 114 pages