If you are a photographer, perhaps you can understand what I’m about to describe. I see photos everywhere. All the time. My eyes scan the world and I imagine what I’m looking as it would appear as a photograph. Today I was driving up a street I have literally driven hundreds of times, and all I could see were photographs waiting to be made. Mind you, I did not have a camera to my eye at any time while this was happening. No matter. Just like that kid from “The Sixth Sense” I see photographs, everywhere. Today, for instance, I was imagining capturing images with my old Yashica 124G: a 2 1/4 square, medium format, twin lens reflex film camera. I might actually go back out in the next few days and shoot those scenes with that particular camera. Or perhaps I won’t have to do that at all, having already seen the resulting images in my mind.

I sometimes think of this constant scanning through an imagined viewfinder as both a blessing and a curse. Everything is photographable, as Garry Winogrand would likely attest, but it also puts an additional expectation on me when I’d rather just be aimlessly staring into space. On a more enlightened note, I try to remind myself that I am fortunate to be able to see at all. Blindness is a real source of fear for me. That my brain can still survey my surroundings and reward me with random firings of creative thought should feel like the gift is truly is. Who knows how long my brain will function this way?