Philostrophy

By popular request, I give you a little hedge preaching. Some call this philosophy.

I'm allergic to words like creativity, inspiration and uniqueness. Creativity is just tinkering with stuff, inspiration is only what happens when you tinker with stuff, and if anybody is unique, everybody has to be unique, except maybe for twins, but there are only two of them at a time.

I tinker, I distrust inspiration, and I don't bother about being unique. And I repeat myself.

Now that I have descended to the level of rank amateur, I can take the profession very seriously : I am my own client, my own teacher, and I give myself the assignment of producing a few decent pictures every day. Make the best that I can from the views that are given to me. 

'It's not the camera, it's the person behind it' is the phrase. Then somebody added that it is the guy, with a camera, that makes the picture. But what really makes the picture is all that which is in front of the camera that is in front of the eye. All three are needed to make a picture. That, and a finger.

It would be nice to be able to hop around the planet like Salgado, or shoot the furiously famous like Leibowitz, but I am neither. Just a train conductor who happens to live in Brussels. I take pictures of the way to work, of work, of my friends, of street people, of my city. A banal cityscape in a mediocre city deserves as much attention and care as a panoramic view of Yosemite. A beggar deserves a great portrait.

The blog is a notebook. Not a final edit. Just what comes out decent that day. More rigorous editing is for later. Series are shaping themselves. The daily shot when stepping out the door. Les fins coins de Bruxelles - the fine corners of, yes, you guessed it. 

And you are my teacher too. The number of views gives me some idea of which ones attract more attention. You could comment on pictures, if you would. I'm interested. And you can like me and share a preferred photo on your Facebook and Twitter and all the others, make me famous!

Oh, et pour les belges, la même chose.