I spent yesterday in the Emergency Room doing battle with a pesky kidney stone. These small reminders of our mortality can help focus us toward the gift of health and time to explore the world with our cameras. I try as best I can to remember that every day.

Minor White's famous advice points us to photograph as metaphor. But that is not the only way of interpreting his maxim. "What else it is" could also point to using what you photograph be bending it to what you want to say as an artist.

A few thoughts on today's audience and how it differs from the audience of the mid-20th century.

Finding your own path is the essence of the creative life. If you are producing work that follows the popular trends of the day, almost by definition you are not creating work from your inner self. Conformity is not the way of the artist. Neither is rejection of conformity.

Sometimes, the flip of a light switch is a pretty good metaphor for the creative process. We go from darkness to light, from being lost to a moment of clarity and even insight. We flip from everyday consciousness to one of creative vision. The interesting question about this is whether or not that flip happens because of something external, or is it strictly something inside us? Or is there a third possibility?

I'm sure I'm not the only youngster who was given this advice by their parents. Couldn't the same logic be used in our photography? Are there boring subjects, or is it that we are the ones who are at fault? If I were to say, "Photograph your life!", you might respond that your life is boring. Remember what your parents told you.

How many good images does it take before you define a trip as a success? How many books do you need to have published; how many exhibitions; how many sales; how many thumbs up; how many hits are needed before you feel that you've succeeded? Is artmaking a quantitative accumulation of successes? If not, how do you define success?

I once had a plan to drive and photograph down every dirt road in my home state of Oregon. I pursued this for years. And then I found the flaw in my strategy.

I remember once when I was still in school a time when I solved a technical problem in the darkroom. I can out with the wet print in my hands to share my success with my classmates. They were all vapidly unimpressed. The technique was successful, but the photograph was stupid. That was the moment I learned that content is everything.

We all own a camera and we all take pictures. I suppose, by the technical definition, that means we're all photographers. But that certainly does not mean that we are all artists.