The lonely plate of rice

Breakfast of champions
Toronto, ON
May 2012

It's no secret that I shoot pictures of food*. Unlike my kids, my dog and most of my friends and members of my extended family, food can't run away when I show up with a lens and an idea. Food sits in one place patiently while I compose and muse and measure. It puts up with my photographic idiocy.

Four years after I carefully laid this plate down on a stone patio and took the overhead-perspective picture you see here, I still can't explain why I took it. Come to think of it, I can't explain this photo any more than I can explain any of the others that I've taken along the way.

It's just one of those things that makes me feel better about being alive. It cuts through the rank seriousness of life. It makes people smile - well, some of them, anyway - and it reminds me that creativity can live in some pretty fascinating places. Not everything needs a reason, anyway. Not everything needs to be explained.

*The evidence: Here, here and here.