That’s a statement that’s been attributed to the poet, William Carlos Williams. It gets me to thinking this – have you ever noticed that when you tell someone about something, how you go into great detail? Then when you tell the next person, you go into a little less detail. Then when you tell the next person, you go into even less detail. The last person may, if they’re lucky, get a one sentence overview.

I have some ideas why this might be. I think that in part this is cognitively related. First of all, the brain, in the telling, compresses information. And, at the same time, the said event becomes an increasingly distant memory. I’m sure that a neuroscientist would agree, and also be able to tell me exactly what brain functions are in use/disuse when this happens.

What I like the most about photography is that the details in the image stay the same. A person sees the image anew, and therein lies the story. Three photos here, taken in the past few days. Already, in the telling, I’m eliminating detail. But the detail in the photos remains. I call this series “Side views” because they all are of sides of buildings.

Tomorrow I’m going out and taking photos of the fiddlehead ferns. They come out this time of year – and they’re edible before fully blooming. We have huge fields of them up the hill behind the house. They won’t be there for long, so I will have to put this at the top of my things to do list.

Milk cans on the side of Bill Schmidtkunz's shed

Clay posts on the side of Bill Schmidtkunz's shed

An image of me taking a picture of a wooden camel at the Woolston's

Next: 172. 05/29/12: Patience