Yesterday, I launched a $3,000 funding project for a new Monochrome black-and-white digital camera. I was almost instantly rewarded with some generous contributions – $700 in just a few hours Monday via Paypal, checks on the way to my Post Office Box.  I don’t know about today.

I was not comfortable doing a crowdsourcing project for a $15,000 Leica camera, it just felt like too much for me now, and perhaps for you,  I learned there were good alternatives and was happy to choose one. I will always dream of a Leica, but appreciate what I have.

Thank you for your support.

The first message I got was from Chris who wrote to say she was sending me some American Express Traveler’s Checks, she is housebound now and does not expect to use them. My photographs, she said, have brought her joy and comfort to her and she wanted to contribute to my new camera. It was, she said, the least she could do. Such messages sometimes bring tears.

There were also some different kinds of comments, and I have always believed if you share the good, then you have to share the bad. That is what it means to be authentic.

I got this e-mail from Steven, who announced he was quitting the blog after reading it and my books for six or seven years:

“I’ve been a reader of your blog since about 2009 and of your books since before that. I quit the blog today and I wanted to let you know why. Cyberbegging and so-called bankruptcy. You should be ashamed to ask people for money because you cannot manage it. You certainly seem to have enough money when it comes to vacations to Disney, Cape Cod, NYC, Inns in Vermont, movies. Cameras that cost more than some peoples’ cars, and then you have the nerve to ask the public to give you more when you run out? Insane. And now crowd funding a $7,000 camera you’ve just got to have. Doesn’t your $8,000 Canon have a monochrome mode? You’re living your life off the sweat of taxpayers and I’m tired of watching that spectacle. For you the internet is the equivalent of telemarketing, late night TV evangelism and sitting on the corner with a tin cup.”

I’m not sure how the taxpayers got into this, I am not aware that any are paying for me, but I did read and consider Steven’s message, it echoed some of my own thoughts at times and surely, the thoughts of some others.  I’m sure Steven speaks for many, as does Chris. That is the nature of the world, of a life in the open. I guess I have to be honest, like most artists and writers, I have been begging for money my whole life, mostly from publishers.

I do not feel shame, Steven, and my  bankruptcy was all too real. And no, my camera does not have a Monochrome mode.

I am actually begging my publisher right now to get the money I am owed for my next book, hopefully in time to pay my taxes. I have done as little begging as I could manage in my life, but I do intend to survive and hopefully, to grow. Steven is correct that I cannot manage all of this camera equipment and repairs by myself, I remember that William Faulkner borrowed money from his neighbors to pay for a  new typewriter to finish a book.

He wrote that he was embarrassed, but never ashamed.

Once in a while, I actually get some money.  That’s how I got the camera I use now, as Steven remembers. I expect this project will be successful, and I am very glad it is for $3,000 and not for $15,000. Some people suggested a new camera is a “luxury,” I get that but it is surely not a luxury to me, as my wife pointed out so eloquently on her blog. It is so wonderful to be known.

Still, I thought reading Steven’s message – he writes well – that it is possible to read about someone’s life and work for years and not know them. I fear this is a failure of writing on my part. I do not see myself in his message.

Maria saw it all happen. Photography transformed me, it helped me to see the world anew. So does every lens and camera I get. And what could be more meaningful that. That is no toy, no luxury. I never took a photo in my life until I met her, and I can no longer bear to move anywhere without a camera. Photography has given me my true voice, as much or more as writing.

I’m not sure how cyber-begging differs from plain old fund-raising, but I know crowdsourcing is a radical new idea, and I support it and do not apologize for it. No one has a gun to their heads. People can contribute or not, that is the beauty of it, and just as no one should be pressured to contribute, neither should they be ridiculed for it.

As my friend Ed Gulley said, people can give a buck or not, enough said. But in our world, of course, there is no such thing as enough said.

I think this question of always scrambling for money is in the nature of the creative life. I would wager that Steven has a job and a paycheck that comes every week.

I don’t know any writers with money, or any artists either. We all swallow pride and circumstance from time to time, we all dance for our supper, whether we like to admit it or not.  When we talk to one another, money comes up all of the time, it is in the tapestry of our work and lives. Once, writers had rich patrons who supported their work. How strange.

All I can do is  tell the truth about it and let people decide for themselves whether my work is important enough to help support.

I respect Steven’s opinions and wish him well, if I were to ask him one question it would be this: in all of these years, looking at all of those photos and words, did he ever consider what it cost to produce them? Did he ever offer to pay for the blogs he was enjoying or consider what it costs to take photographs and publish them every day?

Sometimes I feel like the dairy farmers who constantly wonder that everyone expects to find milk and food in the market, but nobody wants to know where  it came from or what it took to get it there.

I think the story of life is that you must find in yourself that which moves you.  And you must do it.

But Chris’s message is just as much a part of the story as Steven’s. Both voices are powerful and distinct. I feel a closeness and connection with so many of the people who read my work and look at my photographs we have been together a long time. For some, like Steven, that is a fragile bond, broken by a camera. For others like Chris, it is an affirmation, the point of my life.

And isn’t that the very story of life, it’s very nature, it’s yin and its yang? To find your myth is to find your zeal. Wisdom has to come gradually, if it comes at all.

The creative life is almost never secure, it will always be dependent on the wishes and decisions of others. It is for greater minds than mind to figure out how important pictures and words and paintings and quilts are in a world of many competing interests.

In the meantime, if you wish to contribute to my camera project, you can send checks to Post Office Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or contribute via Paypal (Friends And Family) [email protected].

And thanks, either way.