PICK OF THE WEEK: My Work Goes On despite distractions

Hi everyone
This week's Pick is actually my Tumblr Pick of the Week from this week. I just felt that it is such an important post that I really needed to repeat it here on Instants Out of Time. Hope you don't mind!
As always I really do welcome your comments or feedback.

An Outstretched Hand Ignored (Ubud Bali Indonesia)

Our five weeks in Bali is rapidly drawing to an end. And I thought for this week’s pick I would just talk a little about some thoughts I’ve been having the last couple of days. You see, I have felt distracted here. Yes, I know it’s a funny word to use in the circumstances. I mean, here we are in Bali for crying out loud! It’s a beautiful place in so many ways; it’s given us so much to think about and it’s been overall a hugely interesting and valuable travel experience.

I find it hard to just have a “holiday”. I want to be out on the street working all the time. But as I’ve just said there is so much to see here and such colour to occupy the eye and mind that focusing on street photography has been just too difficult. I know, I really should have just said, “Hey, relax. You’re on vacation.” But there you are. I can’t and couldn’t. So I just did the best I could, and in the end I have managed the odd image that I think works.

Anyway, the thoughts I’ve been having about distractions. I have decided that I don’t really want to photograph pretty landscapes or other scenes. I don’t want to do flowers or trees or sea scenes or anything else. All I want to do, all I’m any good at all at, is humanist street and social documentary photography. You see, when I go out to the streets I want to just be there, and not looking around for the pretty scene, building, tree or statue or whatever else that isn't about the people and life there and then.

I’ve found it’s pretty much impossible to do justice to my work or even to whatever it is that distracts me when I am not focused on the work. And, at the end of the day, that’s the point really. The work I do is too important to allow it to be diluted by a wandering eye and mind that is distracted by other things. I do not suggest that those other things are “bad” or it’s wrong to photograph them. Not at all. There are so many wonderful and talented photographers who show us every day what a wonderfully beautiful world we live in with their landscapes, nature photographs, and the rest. I for one am grateful to them all.

My role however, is as a street and social documentary photographer. I am rededicating myself to my work and my aspiration to become good at what I do.

The photo I have chosen for this week’s pick is stark and dramatic.  It is a market scene that could be anywhere in the world. But it happens to be in Ubud in Bali. I will let it speak for itself.

Peace