We could be considering writing or painting and drawing as much as the photography that prompts today’s line of thinking. Specifically, I’m reflecting on the tension between trying to capture everything I see everywhere versus the reality that one needs limits.
For starters, I reach a point in shooting where I begin to weary. Push hard enough and everyone hits a wall. When it comes to photography, I just stop seeing images of interest. When I’m writing, my words go flat. Folks in other endeavors can relate their own versions.
A second fact of life comes in trying to arrange and manage what I already have. Accumulate too much and I’ll never find anything when I want or need it.
I find a similar tension in a writing project, where I can hope for a tightly focused, crystalline work even as it begins to expand into a complex baroque construction. Or the other way around.
As I’ve been shooting over the course of the Red Barn, I’ve found myself increasingly resisting an urge to range more widely from my base in Dover. I’m sticking more and more to what’s at hand here and in a few other familiar places like Sandwich, to the north, and Fort Foster in Kittery Point, Maine. We’ll see how that evolves in the future.
For now, what fascinates is seeing how much new keeps appearing to me in our yard or while I’m walking to meeting for worship on Sunday. Perhaps that’s why working on pieces in a series hold so much appeal as more and more keeps surfacing from the depths.
The other aspect of the series is the desire that somewhere in there is the one iconic piece that rises above the rest, can stand on its own, deserves its own place.
Oh, what would Monet say to all this? Or Matisse? Or any of a host of others!
Jnana's Red Barn 
I can identify wholeheartedly with this. Thank you for posting!