Off a cliff? (Whining RANT)

[Khary L. Dixon]

I have been in love with photography ever since I could remember. My father would pick me up on the weekends, we would stop past the store and pick up a bag of peanuts. We end up at a local park and as I fed the squirrels as he fired off endless rolls of Black & White film. The next day we'd spend all that Sunday developing and watching football. This was the life.

Now I find my self shooting in this digital age, and I feel like I am headed off a cliff. I look at of my body of work and feel like I have gotten a handle on the technical parts of photography (not mastered) but I seem to not feel that joy as I did in my childhood, when seeing my work in Aperture 3. My work seems repetitive and uninspiring, I feel like I have flat lined.

Is this it? Is this why I am here? To shoot and post and hope respected members of this forum and others like it like my work?
My clients love what I produce and deliver.

(Side note: I respect all members of this group and in NO way, am I sending out disrespect to them, Abel is a great guy for putting together an amazing site like this one, I would be premium member, but I don't have a paypal account. So I use all his links hoping it makes him money.)

I know some of us REALLY want to learn the art and craft of photography, and boy do I love talking about photography to those people. I love learning new things myself and crave more knowledge.

I am just questioning, what I want my journey in photography to be....

Have anyone else had this feeling? What did you do to get over it?

They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words but my pictures just snore...

[iCe]

Not to get all philosophical on you but:

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

1. The Road Not Taken


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Sometime you just have to step away from what you are doing... take an unfamiliar path. If all you shoot is portraits, get a macro lens. Don't abandon portraits. Embrace something else.

As my friend Fran is finding out, it's not the destination, it's the journey. I used to be the worlds worst at not stopping to shoot something that I saw that I liked. I would think "I'll shoot that some other day" but it would never happen. Not no mo...

[Buddha]

Do you ever shoot for yourself anymore? If you do, I missed it. You need to.

[bburton]

Originally Posted by iCe

Sometime you just have to step away from what you are doing... take an unfamiliar path.

I agree.

If you've not tried infrared photography, give it a whirl; it may open your eyes to whole new vistas in the light spectrum. Worked for me; still does.

[Tom]

Is this it? Is this why I am here? To shoot and post and hope respected members of this forum and others like it like my work?
My clients love what I produce and deliver.

I don't really care if people here like my work, but I hope that my participation makes me a better photographer as I have things I can learn from all photographers as well as I hope that my participation here can help others learn things I have picked up along the way.

So I can't answer for you, but I can definitely say that my participation here is:
1. To help others get better
2. To improve myself
3. Building friendships and relationships with others that are also trying to improve themselves. (I am actually at the Galleria 24 hour Starbucks with my wife and another Pixtus member right now and we are having a coffee and editing party!)

[iCe]

I don't really care if people here like my work

I'm shocked!

Not really

[Tom]

Originally Posted by iCe

I'm shocked!

Not really

I would actually prefer people here think my work is crap, because then they could point out flaws and I could improve more.

"Ohhh Pretty" doesn't make anyone better.

[iCe]

Originally Posted by Tom

I would actually prefer people here think my work is crap, because then they could point out flaws and I could improve more.

"Ohhh Pretty" doesn't make anyone better.

Agreed. People here are nice (in general) and I like it that way. If I want to get beat up and bruised I go over to Birds As Art and post my imperfections there Someone will ALWAYS point out the one pixel that is wrong in the image on that site But I always learn something from it so I'm not complaining... just noting

[kayumangi]

I used to experience the same when shooting weddings. I felt it was always the same, bride walks down the isle, first kiss, formals right after ceremony and table shots and so on.

But then my mentors taught me, not to make any expectations. That I should treat every wedding to be different. And if I could, don't even attempt to chimp, heck some even suggested putting a duct tape over the LCD, but I'm a coward, so, no duct tapes for me, but at least I seem to be chimping less and less =)

Anyhow, as other folks have said, try to remember what made you love photography in the first place and start from there. And if that still doesn't work, maybe you need to put down the camera and do something completely different, bungie jumping perhaps? just joking hehehe.

[Khary L. Dixon]

Originally Posted by Tom

I don't really care if people here like my work, but I hope that my participation makes me a better photographer as I have things I can learn from all photographers as well as I hope that my participation here can help others learn things I have picked up along the way.

So I can't answer for you, but I can definitely say that my participation here is:
1. To help others get better
2. To improve myself
3. Building friendships and relationships with others that are also trying to improve themselves. (I am actually at the Galleria 24 hour Starbucks with my wife and another Pixtus member right now and we are having a coffee and editing party!)

Thank you Tom for taking the time to read and respond to this post. It's participants like you and others that make this group/site worthy of joining. My quote was basically questioning my personal motivates.

BBurton-IR Photography? no I have not could be a challenge.

iCe- Thank you for the excellence poem to read. Made me reflect this morning.

Thank you all for great advices, I will never quit shooting. I just need to go underground and hash this thing out!

[crazeazn]

film.

[Flores]

sounds like you just stopped pushing yourself. there are so many things you can do with a camera and so much more you can do with your post processing.

[Khary L. Dixon]

Originally Posted by Flores

sounds like you just stopped pushing yourself. there are so many things you can do with a camera and so much more you can do with your post processing.

I really think you hit a point, processing! I have been planning to do some hard drive cleaning and organize. Thanks for reading and a great suggestion .

[lfmerrell]

Try rainy night drive-by B&W photography of your CBD or Arts District. If there is a touch of fog so much the better. And if you can round up a driver that would be the 'best.

[J Eddington]

Turn off your viewing screen and use a small memory card. Now figure out how many shots you have and go photograph something. Remember you only have a few shots say 25, then come back and pull them up on your computer and see how you have done. Did you get your settings right. It is just like film if you don't look at your screen when shooting. It saves some of the excitement until you "develop them". I always shoot like I am shooting film. It makes me think about what I am shooting.
And when that just doesn't do it, I shoot film or Large Format tintype, cause some days I just want to play with chemicals.