I have been taking photographs for a long time now and would like a place to display them. That is the simple reason for beginning a Flickr photostream.

The real reason. Well...it has to do with chance. I believe, more than anything else, chance rules a person’s life. The ability, or lack thereof, to deal with chance determines life’s direction. Chance events are often haphazard in the way in which they are revealed; their arbitrary nature compels many of us to scream out about fairness. But this is a world in which anything can happen to anyone at anytime. Fortunately, the room left to maneuver within the boundaries of a chance event can bring positive consequences as often as not. The fun lies in the fact that such consequences, happy or not, play out in ways we could never have imagined, and sometimes not even to us, but to our descendants many years down the road.

Photography plays a lot with chance, dealing as it does with the unexpected, the unintended and the unplanned. A photograph represents that tiny slice of time when fluid chance becomes rigid fact, from the unknowable to the unchangeable, all in the blink of an eye, the snap of a shutter. You may have an idea of what it is you want from a photograph but you never know what you will get until you look. (In the days of processing that could take a while.) Happy accidents abound in picture taking, chance again, but even if it all goes wrong, the raw photograph is still an accurate record of that moment in time, of that flash of passing light within that frame Too, the “mistakes” can be more interesting than the intended.

Random is chance’s younger cousin. In a nod to chance, this is how I have set up my photostream, randomly, with basically just the place and a date to give the viewer an idea of what they are looking at.

I’ve noticed that many Flickr members begin at the beginning and end at the end. It’s a fascinating way to show growth and changes of heart. I prefer the unorganized route. In keeping with my philosophy, the placement of my photographs shows the many paths and detours of my life’s journey, hinting at the disruptions and failures along the way, acknowledging the comings and goings, and conceding the happy accidents and the measured successes.

It’s all here in the photographs and the way in which they are presented. The now and the then represent that extraordinary amalgam of the certain and the arbitrary that involves us all. It’s called living a life. Here is a glimpse at mine.