Photography: A Musing

Though this may be a more pensive blog entry, I am going to try my best not to be too negative. I am not writing this, holed up in my dorm room, on a cold, rainy fall night, feeling lonely and sorry for myself. On the contrary, I am home for the weekend, my birthday is tomorrow, and I get to see my best friend this afternoon. In other words, I am doing quite well. Anyway, onto the topic at hand.

I've been thinking lately about my flirtation with this thing called photography. I use the word flirtation, simply because, I can now see that I have not been entirely passionate about it. Whether this was because of my depression, or because I have attempted to venture into this art using borrowed cameras remains irrelevant. I even feel, that that latter fact is a key hallmark of my mere flirtation. There have been countless times I have thought about buying a camera, a few I have looking into purchasing one, and none where I have actually bought a camera. I have survived four years of high school photography classes, and one in college on other people's cameras, which has has limited me quite a bit. Those were four years and a class too many.

Any excellent photographer will tell you, you must be photographing constantly. It cannot be a just a weekend hobby, or something you do for an art class when it comes around, or just an activity to fill some spare time. Harsh? Yes. But to improve your art, just like a sport, one must be shooting daily. Much to the giggles and knowing glances of my class, my photography teacher would repeatedly exhort us to carry our cameras with us everywhere. I really don't think people did too much. For the girls from the Bronx, this may have been a wise choice. However, those that did shoot often, those that make their cameras a part of their bodies improved dramatically. Not only was their overall art better in quality, but they had a tremendous amount of photos, allowing them to choose the best of the best, and not have to scrounge around for a few decent photos to show during critique. I, however, was too busy wallowing in my own self pity to take notice.

I notice now.

Over the past year, I have been content to take a few pictures here and there, (whether or not they are good is a non-issue), look at a lot of other people's photography, engage in artistic communities (although minimally) and call myself a photographer.

Frankly, I am not.

But, I can be.

I am not working this as a sort of "end of my teenage years" rant about how in my twenties, I'm going to take more initiative and be a more diligent photographer. Photography is not really the issue at heart. I feel as though I've been living my life as if it were that photography class. I have not been entirely diligent. I've had bursts of doing well, and then have fallen back into procrastinating, then rushing to do just enough to get by. That's not good enough; that's not what God calls us to.

He calls us not to perfection, but to excellence. God calls us to do our work for Him, not those around us. I've been forgetting that. I have made the habit of my life not even to do my work for others, let alone God. I've been working for myself.

I did not intend for this entry, which was indeed supposed to be about photography, to extend to some of the things God has been teaching me toward the end of this summer. But perhaps it was appropriate. This past week, I has been starting to forget.

I was reminded, and inspired to write this by reading an interview of a photographer whose work I really have come to like. Not only did it clear up some serious misconceptions about his personal character, but also got me to thinking about my work, which led me to think about how it mirrored my life.

Sometimes, God can be pretty clever.