I’m not a photographer. But I take pictures, and after I’ve taken as many as I can, I bring them back to the laptop and find the good ones and edit them until they look exactly the way I want them to look. Then I resize them to 600 pixels wide and save them as jpegs compressed at something like 90%, and close the editor. I don’t save the source edits, and I don’t save a highres copy.

This guarantees two things. One, that I can never really revisit any of the edits without starting over completely. Two, I can never take a closer look at any finished product. It’s over and done and can be seen in any sort of larger size without, again, starting over. It’s gone. (‘Got a sort of woody quality to it – gone…’)

I’m not sure why I do this. But it’s very intentional, every time. Sixhundredpixels and discard the source. The 600 comes from the width of this site’s content column; it’s been a constant for the last two or three design revisions. Consistency. Large enough to get the idea, but small enough to be useless for anything except a glorified thumbnail. The edits happen in the first place because the first shot is never the way I see it. Want to see it. The shadows aren’t deep enough. There’s too much red in your skin, and the sky was brighter than this. The sky should be brighter than this. I fix things. Open her eyes a little wider, mend the leaves where they’re torn and dying. Fix the memory. Straighten and frame the memory. Then burn it. But take a polaroid first for posterity, hang it on the wall.

This has something to do with the way I treat the past. I’m not exactly sure what. It feels like I’m afraid of it, somehow. Which is strange. There’s nothing to be afraid of.