August 14, 2015


Pressure of time.  To little when your are intrigued by your subject and fully involved in creating a meaningful photograph.  To much time on your hands when you are bored with your subject and you want to move on but something is there that you are not getting.  Why this scene, what has it got that I need to make an image of, I feel compelled to stand and search the details that are trying to form that will be an image made not taken.  Sometimes you can, other times you can't find the stimulus that forges you ahead to see the subject clearly.  That Aha! moment when the details gestalt and what was invisible to your senses now is manifested.

We are afraid of losing time.  We don't have much left as we get older and contemplate our moments rushing past in our own time line.  Loss of time means we can't do all we want therefore we rush through our life making half hearted attempts at success and then settle for the little gifts of pleasure created to sooth the savage beast in all of us.

Photography shouldn't be easy.  It shouldn't be quick.  John Ashbury said, "a poem is a hymn to possibilities." So is photography.

We search for experiences that fulfill our inner needs.  But how do we really know what are inner needs are.  Those inner needs we succumb to might just be desires dominating our personality in the present moment but soon will be replaced with something else that gives us pleasure.  Trained through our lives to accept things as they are we lose our energy for uniqueness.

Photography can be fickle.  There is so many details in the world, that it is hard to focus on your subject through your inner landscape.  Without reflecting on who you are and what you are trying to attain through your images then you will be adding to the tsunami of redundant imitations of lives frozen with their own ego of importance.  If everything is important to take a pic of then everything is reduced to a level of neutral grey.  We must have in our lives images that mean more than a social media post.  We need images with substance and power that forces the viewer to look deeper at the subject present and think about the artist's purpose.

To change direction in your photography is always hard.  To go from clicking the shutter at anything that moves is the beginners quest for meaning in his image creation.  When you begin to try new techniques, when you begin to feel a connection with new subjects that you seem to be drawn to then you are becoming a photographer and not a snapper.

You will find as you explore more of your relationships with the external world more subjects will become visible that intrigue you.