That being said, I must admit that I am still enjoying my renascent interest in photography. I perform this activity during the early hours of the morning and in the early evening when the temperature is cooler and the light is more beautiful. In recent days, I have acquired a fairly long telephoto zoom lens and have been using it to make some photographs of local wildlife.
I'm not sure where I want to go with my photography. For now, I'm just enjoying making images again. In some ways, It's like riding the proverbial bicycle, you never forget how. I'm finding that I still need to come up to speed with the newer digital technology but it's all coming about with surprising ease.
I guess that the crux of the matter has to do with my personality. I tend to latch on to any given activity and ambitiously pursue it to the extent that my expertise in that endeavour leads to it being a profession on at least a part time basis. This can be a good thing as well as a bad thing.
Michelle Shocked once said "Music is too important to be left to professionals." I read that quote years ago in a magazine dedicated to acoustic guitar and I have to admit that it changed my perspective on music and indeed on all artistic endeavour. At the time I read it, I was enduring the diatribes of a friend who was espousing the belief that one couldn't call oneself a musician unless one was doing it on a full time basis. I guess that, in his eyes, anyone who had a day job was to be considered an amateur who shouldn't be playing paying gigs. It was an attitude that bummed me out until I realised how stupid and elitist it is.
Part of the problem of pursuing any kind of artistic career on a professional basis is the requirement of consistency. Musicians function under an age old truism. " You're only as good as your last gig." When I was playing in a couple of blues bands, a guitarist friend of mine paid me a kind of backhanded compliment. He said, "You're a good musician. On your worst night you're competent." I guessed that if I was competent on my worst night, on my best night I was brilliant! I wasn't really going to buy into the "brilliant" part but, ok, as a compliment I guess I'll take it.
The problem with being a professional artist in any field is this requirement of consistency. Remember, you're only as good as your last gig. You've got to be consistently as good as your last effort. The problem is that any ideology that precludes the possibility of failure also precludes the opportunity for growth. ie. " Show me someone who never made a mistake and I'll show you someone who never made anything" ( or at least anything of interest or value )
This brings me to my current situation. I'm a pretty good photographer. Having already marketed some of my newer images, I guess that I could be considered a semi-pro. I can invariably go out and make a clean, sharply focused, properly exposed, well structured photograph. In short, I can always bring home the so called " money shot ". What I need to do now is allow myself the creativity to experiment a bit more. I now have the technology and capability to make images unlike anything I've produced before. The instantaneous nature of digital imaging allows for much more creativity. An SD card for my digital camera costs less than $20 and allows me to make a thousand or more images. For film, $20 does not even cover the cost of film and processing for a measly 36 prints. With digital, if a particular image is not to my liking, it is gone with the push of a button. With film, I pay the price for experimental shots whether they are successful or not.
I guess that the final upshot of all of this is that I need to start thinking outside the box when it comes to my creative endeavours. I'm doing this for fun. I have a good job that pays the bills. What I need to do is just have fun making images that don't need to be pleasing to anyone but myself. A little more fun. A little less structure. Stay tuned. This might get interesting.
...more later
No comments:
Post a Comment