One of the most common pieces of advice given to young documentary photographers is to “photograph your own backyard.” I’m not a young photographer and from what I can tell, young documentary photographers who actually want a career would be better served flying off to a war zone or famine ravished region, though there are plenty of notable exceptions. Danny Wilcox Frazier, for example, started off photographing his home and has successfully expanded from there.
Anyhow, I’m not much interested in any of that, but for whatever reason, have decided to photograph my own backyard. If I don’t fall prey to short attention span syndrome, I figure I’ll take a different approach than usual and document my progress here.
So this is the first photo. On a cold and rainy day a couple weeks ago, I was sitting out back and noticed three skinny, terrified kittens creeping through the back yard, looking like they were not long for this world. So I went inside to get them a bowl of milk to help them along the way, which scared them off, temporarily, and resulted in one hiding under a car and getting run over.
The other two, however, made it back, and have been hanging around ever since. I’ve got a lot of questions on how to handle it, but for now, here’s a photo.
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