I really wanted to make a difference with photography when I first started out. I look at my early work from California and I like it. I believe that I saw what no one was looking at and recorded it. I remember the feeling, the idea, that if I didn’t record this thing in front of me, no one else would. I remember thinking that someday, someone would appreciate my foresight—someone would say: “Damn glad someone got that.” That seems so naive now, but it is true. I had this idea that art, photography in particular, could show not only the important acts people were performing in the world, but the things people walked right past: things people were never seeing; things people were too caught up in their own worlds to notice. I wanted to reveal, through the photos, how I saw the world--and I hoped someone would find that view interesting. I think this is why I’m disappointed with the current state of photography. I constantly see acclamations and praise for photographers and the images they post on social media sites. People admire the photographer’s “eye” or their “vision”—while I see a missed opportunity. Oh, trust me, I have fallen victim to such traps. I am far from immune, and possibly shouldn’t be talking about it, but I like making photographs, I feel compelled to do so. I have shot what I knew would be popular and would win praise. In those shots, I took the easy approach; the popular approach; the safe approach. In that respect, I can be, I should be, labeled a hypocrite. Except I’ve learned that those were mistakes.
In the past year or more, I’ve made an effort to avoid the obvious—to avoid the easy shot. To avoid shooting what I knew would bring “likes”. I began looking for the details that make something interesting, more interesting than its whole. Instead of shooting so many images I fill the card up, I shoot only what a roll of film would limit me to—and of those, I’ve realized a truly critical eye will eliminate all but a few as useless. Instead of making my “work” harder, this change has actually made my work easier. It has freed me from the constraints of public opinion; from the worry of what will someone think about me as a photographer; me as an artist. I realized the work was about what I saw, and what I felt. I found joy once again in photography. I even began moving back to black & white film and developing it myself—though I have to admit I’m stingy with film’s uniqueness and only rare friends and clients have their portraits taken with film.
I finally realized that no one else mattered. They either got it, or they did not. Those that did not get it were not the audience I was seeking. In the novel, The Fountainhead, Howard Roark knew this. I finally decided to follow my inner Roark.