Something new, maybe

I just destroyed this blog. 200 posts over almost 4 years. Lots of good memories, lots of bad pictures. I usually get nostalgic about things like this but I didn't give myself the chance this time. I just selected all, and deleted. I had to do it 9 times to clear the board.

I started blogging back in 2004, before blogs were, well, blogs. I spent that fall semester in London with Samford's London Program, and as I had been given a web address, robculpepper.com, as a gift from a friend that summer, I put it to good use. A couple times a week I would update my site with photos and journal entries. It was quite exciting. People in the US could follow the journeys of a friend in what seemed then like a very far away place.

I went to India in 2006 and blogged it, properly. I guess blogs were a thing by that point (I don't claim to have started them, so you know) and I used Xanga. It let you post what music you were listening to (which was pointless in an Indian internet café, but cool otherwise), and it showed you how many times your post was viewed. You could also give 'e-props,' which I now find to be immensely satisfying.

I started this one shortly after I got back to the states, when I started working as a photographer's assistant in 2006. All the photographers I was working with and for were doing it, so I figured I would do that until I found a 'real job.' Oops.

This blog has had some ups and downs, though the biggest down was when I moved to NYC and abandoned it. At that time I wanted to be a writer so I started an aptly titled wordpress blog. When I moved back to Birmingham, I fired this one up again, and tried, more or less, to put good stuff on it. Problem is, I've never been a consistent journal-er, and (long story short) figured what was here was worth destroying anyway.

So, thanks for following me thus far. Thanks for reading this self-indulgent post. I'm not sure what will become of this space. For now, here are some good quotes about photography and life that should be decent squatters. I 'lifted' a couple from the Magnum blog which no longer seems to be going (not that I'm taking any cues). I'll begin with a photo, though, from a recent trip to Paris. Then a good thought by the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, from whom the subtitle to this blog belongs, then Sam Abell from his book The Photographic Life, then some Magnum-ites.

Cheers,
Rob



"The writer's [I posit: any creative person's] secret is not inspiration – for it is never clear where it comes from – it is his stubbornness, his patience. That lovely Turkish saying – to dig a well with a needle – seems to me to have been said with writers in mind. In the old stories, I love the patience of Ferhat, who digs through mountains for his love – and I understand it, too." - Orhan Pamuk

"But living [the photographic life] had the power to take me away from another life - the life of observing small details and daily dramas, like this scene of French Canadians singing patriotic songs in the men's room of the Montreal airport in 1972. Photographing the scene wasn't part of my assignment. I was on my way to that. But I didn't want assignments to dictate my photography; I wanted life to." - Sam Abell

"Taking good pictures is easy. Making very good pictures is difficult. Making great pictures is almost impossible." -Constantine Manos

"Get a good pair of walking shoes" - Abbas