Finding your Voice, Forging Ahead and That Long Walk Home
Like all creative pursuits, photography is a personal journey, one that each and every photographer experiences from the moment they start out building their own path and career.
Be it trying to understand the magic of how a contraption can capture light and movement when shooting the first roll of film or the inspired seeking of knowledge though doors already opened by other generations that have, through toll and toil, mastered the art of photography, everyone’s path begins differently.
Of all the photographers that I have encountered along the way, most were drawn to photography as a release for their ability to view the world differently than the rest of the general public. Observers of the ever shifting urban climate and documentors of their time frames, these people who have the patience to really look at the world as it goes by will always be a deep well of inspiration. They are also, of course, almost always a source of frustration for others. Finding the light seen out the corner of their eye or the chance meeting to be gone and never seen again, they are forever watching and waiting for the moment to come dancing along into the frame of the viewfinder and held in time immortal.
What has always made the foundation of a great photographer is not the ability to bring an all-conquering-technically-correct dead weight to the table but the fearless ability to pipeline their imagination into the end product that they seek relentlessly.
A photograph of a dog wearing sunglasses will forever remain in its mediocrity as long as it is executed in emotional bankruptcy like so many tones of grey concrete. When starting out influence is key but to emulate is a trap. Once you have fallen for its charms, it can grind your journey to a standstill. The beginning of your journey as a photographer should be a matter of capturing what you find alluring and attractive and broadening your horizons, taking small baby elephant steps with knowledge as ammunition.
Remember that you only have a certain amount of time to produce the work that brings you and only you happiness. Use this as motivation to concentrate on what it means for you to be a photographer.
