One of my favourite sayings when asked for personal advice from a friend or work mate is that "you know your own business best" but I am beginning to wonder if as a photographer, I know my own work best.
I recently showed 2 of my favourite photographs to another respected photographer who in all fairness wasn't seeing it ! I still stand by the statement that these images are among my best but remembering the old adage that photographers are lousy editors of their own work I might be wrong ?
I have to admit to liking "Street" images that contain 5 folks or more as I find the human interaction and subtle body language that these pics posses fascinating, allowing me to return to images time and time again and still learn more about the image I captured. The effect of these more complex interactions is that the images lack impact on first inspection as they are in my opinion anyway, slow burners. The pay off exists if your prepared to invest the time but the short term impact is low unlike some of my other efforts that are high on initial impact but in my opinion burn out too quickly ! (I hope this makes sense).
On reading this back i realise that of course not everyone is going to be prepared to invest a disproportionate amount of time looking for the subtleties that I see, especially if the initial impact of a moment is low and even if they do I can't expect others to share my vision and see it how I do !
I also think that images that are difficult to capture are prized most by the photographers who capture them, but most viewers care very little if you stood in the rain for hours before the moment occurred or that 16 variations of a scenario were explored before the image gave itself up.
The lesson from all of this for me is to try and publish more work and listen to the feedback, others do not necessarily see it as I do. My motivation for creating these images is personal and therefore I enjoy the luxury of self indulgence, as we all should from time to time as creative folk !
Ultimately we can only create images that meet our own interpretations of what is good or interesting, the emotional content of some captures may skew our personal valuations of our own work so it becomes especially interesting when others engage with our pictures and see more and sometimes less than we do .
Enjoy the weekend & keep it real !
