Behind the Barn

The catalysts that determine our lives arrive in mysterious ways. Mine was a stamp collection.

Stamp collecting was popular with us kids back in the Paleozoic era. The more curious were inclined to browsing an atlas or spinning a globe to know where these exotic postage stamps came from. I soon became adept at sleuthing the stamps' provenance in my atlas.

After learning some basic geography from the stamps, further curiosity was about experiencing 'place', visiting areas of interest. Documentation of place would become an obsession, a camera involvement inevitable.

In the post-school years postcards were mailed home bearing foreign stamps from around the world. Snapshots were taken, words were written, as the flaneuring in foreign lands documented the geography, people, and experiences. Colour slides were later shown to friends with home slide shows, popular entertainment at the time. Many fell sound asleep.

A comfort in composing photos morphed into now and then being paid to photograph commercially. This became a career. Photography assignments often demanded travel, sometimes in harsh conditions, but provided interesting material with whatever the subject might be. The career became barely distinguishable from the lifestyle.

A stock photo collection emerged. An ever-growing library of colour slides (later digital photography) was organized by subject matter and locale. The exact date was recorded on each slide as the library was also arranged chronologically. The Slide Farm, originally just seedlings, became a library of about a quarter of a million edited photos.

The Farm was a commercial library for decades. It still is. Now in my dotage there's enjoyment in simply showing the imagery and writing of adventures and impressions to a broad viewership, chronicling the world that was only imagined with a stamp collection.