Sheer White, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Based on the responses I’ve got, my story in Nearly Naked Women struck a chord. People were truly worried, which is touching. For example, K.K. wrote, “Although you don’t owe most of us any explanation, I thank you for giving us one. [You’ve shown] many photos of your family, so even though I don’t really know you, I feel like I do, and the naked ladies were a little disconcerting and worrisome…but also absolutely gorgeous.”

Rest assured, my family is doing well—and will always come first for me.

Approaching a photo like the one shown above may take some detachment (as noted in the previous story) so I can consider issues of composition, exposure, lighting, and so on. It also takes some passion, as does any good photography, no matter what the subject. Then again, eating a good meal or enjoying a movie or novel also takes passion.

Another issue revealed in my previous story is the extent to which my blog represents a day-by-day account of the issues that come up in my life and my photography in something like real time. I noted that my blog “goes back to 2005, includes thousands of almost daily entries, and documents life’s tribulations, photographic techniques, and much more.”

A number of people wrote to say that they had no idea about the quantity of imagery and stories in my archive. The blog format—and the Internet itself—makes it easy to focus on the latest and greatest, and to ignore the past. By the way, the easiest way to start browsing my archives is to use the month-by-month links on my blog’s home page masthead—although you can also search for topics, or simply hit the Older Entries back arrow thousands of times. (I’m not responsible for any repetitive stress injuries that follow the back arrow method.)

I want to point out that I don’t go back and revise older entries. Sure, I’ll correct typos when they are pointed out. But as a matter of principle, I decided not to edit the past. This “no take-backs” policy means that you get my photography (and my life) as I saw it at the time, not as it looks in retrospect.

As I look back my blog is sometimes embarassing, and there are some photos that I posted five years ago that I wouldn’t publish today. But the stories are always authentic, many photos are interesting, and it is a weird by-product of the Internet that I get to have a digital time capsule and archive available for all time (or at least so long as I pay the web hosting fees).