I’m slowly starting to sort this words/images thing out. I’m glad I have the time to think about this. Some people don’t. We make our own realities. I guess this is reverse empathy.

Words AND Images. Some would call this (combined) photojournalism, or journalismphoto. A photo or photos accompanies a story, and vice versa. The story may be about a person, place or thing, and the photo follows suit.

Attached – a photo of an old bus. The story is this—today Pete and I walked down the road to Mike’s place. We put on snowshoes and climbed over a berm in his driveway, into his yard. I’d been wanting for years to take some photos. Today I had my chance.

Mike’s a big time hoarder—he owns two ancient city buses. They’re full of stuff, mostly old newspapers dating back to the Kennedy administration. There are also other storage units on the property, most notably a few campers, boats, trucks, and dilapidated buildings. There’s a lot of small stuff lying around, but right now his yard detritus is covered by four feet of snow.

I once asked Mike about the buses and was told (in a mock-indignant tone) that “they’re not buses, they’re people movers.” Mike said that he’d had them towed up here from Anchorage and added that “they’re not going anywhere.”

I’ve often ridden the horses by Mike’s place, and looked carefully at the People Movers. Some see them (and everything else) as eyesores. Not me. I’ve always considered them to have artistic value. And I’ve often thought that it would be fun to fix them up, and have a neighborhood shuttle service? The latter

is now a foregone conclusion. The buses have begun to disintegrate, and in fact the roof of bus 87 is sagging in the middle.

I took several photos of the People Movers, and would have taken more except I didn’t want Pete to get bored. Alas, my vision is not yet on par with my abilities. Still, I got a few good pictures.

So that’s my story. This narrative could probably stand on its own. But because I allude to photos, it does not. But still, the sum is greater than its parts. This is as it should be. The real challenge in relation to words AND images is to have unrelated writing and photos tell a story. I want to do this, but I’m not there yet.

Next: 99. 3/17/12: Words and Images Continued