sunrise on Siem Reap, Cambodia

What does it mean? We don't get to know. Even if it means nothing, we don't get to know for sure that it means nothing. - Miranda July

A magazine called today asking about photographs from Cambodia, a country I visited in March of 2004. Looking at my photographs brought me back to a time before I really began earning a living as a photographer.

I remember sitting at my computer waiting for the phone to ring and feeling more than a little indignant that I wasn't getting hired to bring my unique talent and creative eye to assignments. In retrospect, it's a damn good thing I wasn't hired more. While I was learning my craft freelancing for the local weekly, I was consistently making some very bad photographs full of visual clichés and lacking in the lifeblood of great photos - moment, content and feeling.

But the other thing that hit me in looking at these photographs is that I still take the same kinds of photographs I took then, just better versions of them.