August 17, 2014

Finding your photographic voice, having a good sense of who you are and what your capabilities are is very important in determining your future goals in photography.  It doesn’t mean that you stop learning and stop growing as a person and as a photographer.  Imitation, study, experimenting, discipline, being their, fighting through life’s barriers and fears, to get out their and experience the world and create images that reflect your inner light, that is what it is all about.

Knowledge gives you a foundation to step off from and confidence to approach life’s subjects with purpose and empathy.

Continuous creation of pictures produces the necessary images needed for you to learn and grow into the photographer you were meant to become.  We build off our experiments and through accumulative practice discover our photographic path. It is a path that allows for many spontaneous expressions and many varied interests that challenge us to get better and to look deeper into life’s infinite choices.  

Each of us come from a different background with our own built in prejudices and standards of seeing.

We must give the viewer a sense of our purpose in creating the image by allowing them visual clues to your intended purpose. This does not mean these clues are the boring mundane visuals we see everyday. We must always maintain our personal approach to creating our photographs and not bend to pop culture’s instant gratification. Images that hold a viewer’s interest are not taken with a herd mentality.

Slow down and be mindful in your living and this will translate to better image creations.  Nature is the antidote to the hectic pace we struggle in.  

Positive reasons for taking pictures is not the end result but the process of creating something of value not only for yourself but for your family and friends and even possibly a wider audience that is longing for new and exciting photographs that stimulate their minds.  

Get up, go out and create images! 

August 14, 2014

The mechanical nature of photography hinders our ability to dig deeper into our own outer reflections.  We assume that photography is the easy of all art mediums and therefore no thought process is necessary to create a meaningful picture.  All pictures taken become meaningful no matter how banal.  This over abundance of blasé imagery that exploits our daily lives is a nuisance that is distracting us from our life goals.  The camera has become a barrier to seeing and living a fulfilling life.  

For me photography is a means of expressing my private self.  The camera gave me a window, an ability to focus on external details that could be brought together through composition, light, perspective in such away that allowed me to express my inner world.

Nowadays people, when taking pictures, think that the camera takes the pictures.  And they are right.  New cameras can take thinking out of making photographs.  It is the old Instamatic ads stating, all you have to do is point and shoot and you will be guaranteed a perfect picture.  But in today's run and gun and post on social media sites nobody seems to care about the camera as an instrument to create art. And in creating a personal vision for the viewer you are interacting with through your image creation.

This picture taking reality we now inhabit is not interaction nor is it communication with others but a shadow life exposed for the the thrill of the upload. And surely for the comments that follow.  This slowly becomes an intermediary world of quasi word play without the responsibility of discourse and the ability to articulate your true self through expressing your inner feelings.  

We see ourselves through others eyes as spectacles for the masses, entertainment with no depth but a cursory glance on a screen that fits into someones palm while ignoring the world that is present in front of them.

Revealing an image with purpose and depth has been replaced by a snap shot, showing off oneself as if you are the stars in your our own Hollywood stills.

Nature has lost it’s appeal, its luster for our intense interest.  Now we want to objectify ourselves to the world by our ego driven need to be seen, we are the true subject of the snapshot.  We live our lives looking at photographs as if these blah images are the new reality.  Sitting at a screen and looking into the mesmerizing images of other humans doing nothing is what entertains us into today's superficial interaction.

We have taken the place of nature and we have become the essence of the photo. Nature now is just a backdrop to our own self promotions.

By putting ourselves and our close environment into pictures that say nothing about ourselves we are acknowledging the loss of individuality and have joined the collective.  We add our fragments to an image industry already burdened by the destruction of photography as an art form.

We expose an outer shell to the world to laugh at or cry with but with no real personal interaction with the screen, except a like or dislike.

Burk Uzzle, "Too many tools can be divisive, obscuring primary relationships between photographer and subject. Dogma is the desperation of shallowness, while discipline, if used instead of worshipped, is liberating".