It’s a funny process we follow in photography sometimes. So certain at the outset the visual direction we will take. Only to head down a totally different path. Often times in a direction never considered hours before.

Traveling out of the country this week I knew there would be opportunities to capitalize on a rich visual environment. The myriad of visual ideas running through my head consuming way to much of my time. Yet, when I arrived, presented with a challanging concept today, I took a path I never would have imagined.

Today I decided to search for bald heads. Not sure what I would shoot once I found them, but confident that when I did I could make something worthy of showing. Trouble is I’m traveling in a culture where men are just not bald. I’m not sure if it’s genetics or fashion, but as I started really looking, not a hairless head did I find. Ok maybe this was a bad idea.

It was time to abandon all that stuff running around in my own balding head and take it someplace different. I started thinking about what you put your head in. A helmet, a hat, a wig. My mind was a mess of ideas and still no clarity or subject for that matter.

But simply letting go just that little bit provided the direction I needed. Abandoning that visual picture so firmly stuck in my mind. Certainly not what I imagined as I walked out the door this morning. Nothing near the culturally rich location I find myself in, but a fun and unexpected turn of concepts in a land where a bald head sticks out like a white guy walking down the street.