A road too far
I kind of feel I’m at the end of a journey at the moment.
After traveling to India, being sick for three weeks, then onto Nepal where my condition just got worse, then back home for 1 month reccuperation only to be told by my doctor that something wasn’t right with my liver, then back to South America to go to Patagonia, then onto Bolivia…. . I just feel…. exhausted.
But you have to get things out of your system and I certainly feel I’ve been doing that lately.
So why do I do it? Why photography? Why go to far flung places? Certainly, when I’m fatigued I certainly start to question my motivations and it’s often at a dark time, when I’m feeling really under the weather that I just want to jack it all in. It is, after all, just photography.
But I think it’s an inner drive thing. If you really want to create something, make a statement, you have to go with what your inner voice tells you. Perhaps this sounds a bit too philisophical, but in order to create good images, you have to be in touch with something more than just wanting to go out and make images. I’m unclear as to why I do it. I like to think I’m quite a modest person, pretty unassuming. I just so happen to be a little bit mad when it comes to photography. Obsessed I guess.
So what’s your reason for doing photography? I’d love to hear about it.
Hi Bruce, interesting question – and one I’ve asked a few times in my few years taking photographs. Personally I think I take photographs because I feel more like myself when I am doing so than at any other time. For me it becomes a sort of meditation – it’s like my brain is usually disengaged or wrongly engaged most of the time but when I’m in the field looking and taking photographs, it’s like I’ve hit the right gear – my brain purrs..
Beyond this, the people I’ve found who care about landscape photography are particularly pleasant company (this seems especially true of the large format photographers I have met). I think the mind set needed to persist in landscape photography filters out some of the people I normally don’t have time for. The conversations around composition, light and technique are also highly enjoyable (as long as we keep away from technology).
Finally, there is something very satisfying about having engaged myself with a scene and brought that vision into life as a transparency or print.
Mostly though, I’ve just discovered a vocation where I can be more me that I ever have been..
Comment by timparkin — 2 May, 2009 @ 8:27 am
I don’t really know why I am doing it. I guess it is just some way to express myself. On the last trip I came to the point when all these questions as to “why am I doing it” and “why it is not as good as I want it” started to really bring me down. So I just decided to take it easy (I am amateur photogrpaher anyway), do it when I feel like it and see what will come out of it.
Maybe I just want to stop the time and place, the moment I am in.
Comment by goosetea — 2 May, 2009 @ 7:22 pm
Basically I just love to stop time and I really get into capturing that one moment in time that will never happen again.
Also, for me, it is relaxing, takes my mind off of my vocation in IT, and when I’m behind the lens I’m not me, I’m someone else hiding in a world that is all mine, where I smile and just plain have fun.
Comment by gc — 3 May, 2009 @ 9:24 pm
I certainly reached the “why the %&%& am I doing this point” last week when I managed to strand a 4WD up to its axles in mud in NW Iceland … I imagine the farmer who rescued me some time later had similar thoughts!
Seriously, I think I just do it because every now & then I really enjoy it. Simple as that. Beats sitting in an office all day (which is where I’m back at right now)
Comment by David Mantripp — 4 May, 2009 @ 3:23 pm