Remembrance

Today, I took a trip back in time with myself to when I first started taking photographs. I have been asking myself a lot about what photography is and means to me. I have been looking out at the enormous wealth of talent out there on the internet and wondering if I have a place there. If I could or even should put my work up here too and more and more I am getting back in touch with the things that first started me on the road to wanting taking pictures to be part of what I do in life.

I took a walk out this morning to a graveyard and walked around remembering myself at 15 when I first got hold of a 35mm camera. I don’t know why I chose that setting to begin with, maybe because it was quiet and people would not get in the way of my lens. I started thinking back to being a younger child and going out to the graveyard with my grandmother for All Souls, every year we would bundle up in the car and tend the graves of our families, bring them fresh flowers, tidy up and maybe leave a bit of something they liked to drink. As a child it marked for me these places as somewhere special to reach out and connect with those we love and who had loved us, not so much as scary gruesome places for a good horror scene.

So as I walked around I began to look again at what was really here in this place, I started to notice the words. Places that had been tended and others not. The stillness, the quiet and sadness.

Social Media

I have over the last few months been exploring the different types of tools and Social Media toys out there designed for getting yourself out there into the world and being seen. What has struck me is just how amazing it is to be able to sign up and plug into a world of different people and cultures. Sharing similar interests and generously interacting with each other. It’s all very captivating and exciting.

I can post up my work and show anyone who cares to follow or watch me what I am up to. I can tell people what I am thinking, I can even show people where I am. I can selectively share with different groups. It’s all very engaging and I more often than once found myself spending a whole day glued to the screen following and exploring other people’s work and meanderings. It’s fun and there is always something new and exciting to see or explore but what I realize more and more is I just don’t have enough time for it all. What I am missing out on now is time for me, for how I see the world and my work. I find more and more I am looking at other people’s work and questioning whether or not my work is up to scratch and whether or not what I am trying to refine in the way I capture my work is valid. This kind of comparative behaviour is a real creativity killer. I have come across it before and as a younger person so I am familiar this destructive behaviour and I am to make that shift that enables me to look at what I can learn from what I see rather than compare myself to it. So where do you find a balance with all this stuff?

I can completely see that there is great value in the tools that give me the ability to reach out to people I have not had the chance to reach out to before and make a connection with them. But there is very little point in reaching out if I then have nothing to say, or I have not taken the time to focus on my work. What I am getting more and more from exploring the social media landscape is that most importantly although I am dazzled by the sheer wealth of incredible talent out there I am looking to connect with people and to connect with others as a person. I want to share not just the work I do but the parts of me and my history that got to where I am and maybe in some way to help others looking for the same thing to keep reaching for what they are going for.