In The Yard

I’m a big fan of personal projects…doesn’t matter what type of media or form of expression. Arguably, every type of work or creation can be considered personal in some way. Whether it’s painting a series of murals, designing a structure, building and landscaping a public thoroughfare, making a sales call or anything else, the person doing the action ultimately brings some personal aspect to it. But a project that is done free of any peripheral influence dictating the outcome is different. The motivations are personal and those motivations, and the resulting project, can tell us something about the person doing it.

The “In The Yard” series started last summer as a way to unwind after work or on the weekends. I enjoy meeting and talking to and learning about people, but sometimes it’s nice to get away and go somewhere else for a while. When I needed to do that I’d dive into the tiny world in our yard and look at the patterns of behavior and relationships between the creatures and plants growing around the house.

I can’t say that the resulting photos are anything unique – there’s a lot of really fantastic small-scale work out there – nor does it attempt to bring large scale environmental issues down to size, but it’s been an enjoyable project and it’s completely different from a lot of the other photography work I’ve been doing. It’s certainly given me a greater appreciation of the smaller world, a new fascination with spiders and a basis from which more new interests have already grown.