To PSYOPS: Many thanks

[ElSato]

Nice to meet you George, and I appreciate your comments.

To answer your question, I don't work with the media. I work at a grind, write my ass off at night hoping to make a living at it one day, and take photographs as something creative and enjoyable to do when I run out of words or get sick of them for a while.

I'm curious about your decision to put down your camera so long ago, but of course if it's not a something you want to get into, by all means don't. There are some obvious things one could read into your decision from the short desciption in your bio, but it's so easy to make inaccurate assumptions about people and situations one doesn't know,so I'll avoid that and just leave it as a gap that you can fill in if you care to.

Thanks again for taking the time to stop by, and I hope to hear from you again some time.

Regards,

Lee

[PSYOPS]

Actually, taking pictures of abnormal aspects of life is much easier than a routine. To me, the country most difficult to be photographed is USA, then Canada next, because most things became standard, and they were seen zillions times: no space for curiosity. For that, you are one of the working-hard photographers.

I felt like you are developing your own path of photography. You have seen too much, and you are under the unability to express all of them in the same picture. You also wanted to use photography to send your messages to viewers. It's a hard road. But if it has been easy, the victory won't be bright, or there won't be victory at all. Maybe I am wrong, but I just want to tell what I thought.

About me, nothing big in my decision of leaving the camera. Nothing wrong about my love to photography, nothing wrong to new technology, and nothing wrong to my hands or my right eye. It's my feet's fault: I am moving around on a wheelchair after an accident. That's all.

Have a good weekend, Lee.

George

[ElSato]

Hey George,

Thanks for the reply. I've been busy the last few days and haven't checked in with TE until today or I would have answered earlier.

I agree with you that the easy victories are in photographing "exotic" locations. Everything seems interesting when you're in a new country (at least it looks interesting to the foreign photographer and his foreign viewers -- I assume it looks ordinary, and sometimes even boring, to the people who live there).

When you're at home, things are a lot more challenging, but a lot more rewarding when it goes right. You have to keep an eye out for things that are odd and in some way special. I think a few of my pictures do that, although not everything I post here succeeds nearly as well as I'd like it to on that level.

And North America is especially hard to photograph because it's not only the people who live here who are swamped with images of it; it's all over TV and it's in so many movies that people all over the world feel some familiary with it. I suspect it could be difficult even for a visitor to take photographs here in a new and imaginative way.

About you, I'm glad I didn't jump to conclusions about why you stopped taking pictures. It would have been easy to think that you associated taking pictures with being in Vietnam and preferred not to remember that time, or something like that, but now I know that the explanation is simpler: an accident, a wheelchair, and difficulty getting around. Thanks for answering my question, by the way.

I didn't get your message in time to return your wish for a good weekend last weekend, so I'll wish you a good weekend coming up. Hope all's well with you.

Lee