On Counting and Consistency
I wrote this whole post without mentioning Sesame Street.
Sometimes I find myself counting my steps. Walking, I’ll count the steps that take me across the street, or how many steps up to our apartment. I don’t really retain or use this information (I couldn’t tell you how many steps our apartment building actually has, even after living here for three years). It's not a useful counting – it is a counting to occupy my brain when it lacks any other process to occupy itself. The counting keeps a satisfying rhythm without a need for real focus, and when I do eventually turn my attention to something else, I leave off without a thought to what number was last.
I also count to go to sleep. I started in college, when I would fall into bed dead tired but have too much rattling around my head to drift off. I found counting deep breaths, and picturing as clear as possible the shape of each number, was just enough nueral activity to distract from the day’s anxieties. It is still the best way for me to fall asleep – I’m usually lights out around 34 or so, depending on how tired I am and what time it is.
On top of all my other counting, for better or worse, I’ve started to count how many pictures I take. I guess I should say that Lightroom is counting for me, and I just watch the little numbers tick up every time I plug in my SD card. This started a few years ago when I wanted to see if I would take more pictures with a digital camera once I had made the jump from film. I switched in part due to economic reasons, and was anxious to see that I made the right choice moneywise. Overall, my rough calculations at the end of the first year showed I was indeed taking more pictures for less money. I was satisfied, but for some reason I still keep an eye on that “All Photographs” number as it slowly adds up throughout the year.
Last year, I took just over 3000 pictures with my main camera. I took just over 1000 more with other cameras, not counting my phone. I took more pictures than I did the previous year, in the best way. I traveled more, took more walks, and had my camera with me more often in general. It feels good to see that reflected in the math. And that’s just the beginning – Lightroom can tell me how many pictures I’ve taken with a certain lens (2866 with my 63mm), or the exact number of pictures I’ve toned to print (333), or the single day I took more pictures than any other (September 13, photographing behind-the-scenes of a friend’s band recording their new album). I could certainly fill out the back of a baseball card with all these stats, but I have struggled to figure out what real purpose keeping track of all this serves.
Maybe I’ve started to count the pictures I take because I feel a need to be more consistent. I want to be the person to send out a newsletter every week, to post on Instagram every other day, to publish a new book every year. Everything about how I share art online encourages that consistency – the number of Instagram posts I’ve shared sitting right at the top of my profile, the line graph of my Substack subscribers squiggling up and down each month as I post or don’t post, the cacophony of online voices saying the key to success is to pump out as much content as possible to see what the new attention-hungry algorithms might deem worthy. I want to share what I make with as many people as possible, but to do so online involves keeping track of so many numbers and metrics, most of which I barely understand. I am counting constantly, and not in the way that lulls me to sleep.
All this counting feels somehow too productive, though, like how an overbearing boss might track my progress if my job was to take pictures of stumps and mailboxes. I don’t want to be my own overbearing boss. I have always embraced spontaneous inspiration over a strict or scheduled practice, making art when it feels right to make art and focusing on what I am most excited about in the moment. My best ideas for pictures or projects are what bubble to the surface – there is no pressure to complete anything I am not confident in. I do little to track my progress, and I am happy with everything I put out because every step along the way feels natural. But if the post schedule of this newsletter is any indicator, this way of working doesn’t exactly promote the consistency so many online artists seem to think is necessary for success (this very essay was started as an end-of-the-year post for 2024).
At the end of the day, I don’t think counting the number of photographs I take is the key to consistency. Even if it was, I truly believe that kind of output isn’t for me. I think, deep down, I keep track of the numbers just because it feels good. Pictures are another thing to count, and seeing that number go up means I’ve been doing something consistently, even if no one else knows. It's a metric that has no bearing on anything outside of my own practice. An algorithm didn’t decide that I took more pictures this month than the last, the total isn’t a function of how many followers I have or how many people read my newsletter, and the only thing responsible for that number going up in the future is my own will to get out into the world with my camera. Having complete control over a statistic, maybe the most important statistic to my art-making, is powerful in a way that I don’t get to experience often. Counting how many pictures I’ve taken is a way of acknowledging this power, and not taking it for granted in a world where just about everything else about making and sharing online art seems to be out of my control.
As of the writing of this post, I have taken 703 pictures in 2025. I’d say I’m off to a good start. I haven’t posted here (obviously) or anywhere else for a while, but I have a stack of work prints sitting on my desk that could, at any minute, become something worthy of sharing. I’ll see what strikes me. Until then I’ll keep taking pictures, counting each and every one.
I feel the need to add a brief and not-so-subtle plug for my book Desert Wild Life, which is still available for purchase here. I have a few copies left and would love for them to be in the hands of more people.