I am lucky enough to get asked from time to time to talk to a group of people about photography. I say lucky enough because its a topic I love to talk about. I remember the endless discussions about whether or not photography was an art when I was an art student. It led me to proclaim one of the few things I hold as truths in this life. "Who cares!" Seriously, who cares if it is an art or not, it is photography and that alone makes it worthy of its own place in time. I think the argument must come from the idea of intent and execution of intent. Any 'artist' who knows a dedicated 'photographer' knows that the intent is the same, to make something that grabs the viewer to examine their life in a new way. I know I take photography very seriously, even the mundane situations I'm presented. I chafed with a friend today about the mundane and realized that familiarity can make for a lesser understanding of the document we wish to create(surprisingly) because we don't see it with fresh eyes. I work hard to see things with fresh eyes but find myself often confronted working for a small community paper covering the same subjects over and over again. I've written about this before, but it holds true, familiarity is good, but fresh eyes are sometimes better. I'll never know for sure which is better, not knowing my subject so I can approach it without a bias, or being part of a community where I feel my subject from within? I struggle with this in many ways, but ultimately know its best to put myself into my work so that I'm proud of my place. This isn't always evident in the individual pictures I make, but I hope it is in the overall of my life's work. Even if its a simple team picture day photo for head shots that will appear in the paper when one of the young guys does something statistically worthy of note, I want to make a good photograph from this experience. I wish for myself that I felt this every single day!
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AuthorI have been a photographer/artist for the last 30 plus years (since 1966 if you believe as I do that I was born to do this!) CategoriesArchives
May 2015
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