So many pictures that, when it comes round to the end of the year and I work on our annual photo book, I can never fit all the photos I take.
It makes me wonder: what will the kids remember? Which photos will the kids treasure? Will they care at all? Or will they see dad as a fussy ol’ snapshot artist?
Hard to say! But I keep snapping away, regardless.
Here’s what I do know: when my mom passed away, I didn’t care about getting anything else but our photo albums from when we were kids. I poured over those albums growing up, and in a lot of ways those pictures helped anchor my memories. As a kid, the past is fuzzy. But with photos, it can come to life.
Lately, I’ve been pining for the past – those productive photography days when I had a glut of photos to take, process, and share.
These days, photography is harder to do. I don’t have a picturesque commute, or much time to dedicate to making the types of photos I did a few years ago. I look back through my Flickr feed and remember those productive days, and it makes my heart ache a little bit.
A lot has changed. I got married, had kids, switched jobs, moved our household. It wasn’t one thing that made me shoot less, but a combination of things. There’s also a mental component, where I find it hard to feel like making photos.
The tough part is being okay with this new period in my life. Here’s how I’m trying to cope:
Picking up Instagram has helped a bit – trying to keep to a semi-daily photo sharing practice
Wrapping up my photo project and staying in touch with my portrait subjects
Making more family photos of the kids playing around the house, or going on walks
Revisiting some old photos and processing them in my current style, for a change of pace
Feeling grateful that I had a period in my life where I was super productive, and made some fun photos
Those are not a cure-all, as a lot of my guilt comes from my life situation changing, and I can’t do anything about where I live or the free time I have. What I can do is build some new routines around my current schedule and lifestyle.
One of my favorite artists, Joan Miró, went through similar ups and downs during his career. Art can be bi-polar, filled with peaks and dips. My hope is that a few little things will be satisfying enough to last me until my next upswing.
That’s it. After almost two years, I finished my musicians project.
And what a relief. So many ups and downs with this project, from a failed Kickstarter to wondering whether I could complete the project at all, that it feels pretty good to have the thing finished.
There in the last few months, during February and March, I tried to schedule a photo session with a well-known musician here in town. After a few reschedules, I finally gave up trying, and finished up the last week of March with my final musician: my wife.
I saved her for last as a sort of friendly torture. She hinted at me plenty these past two years – “You know, I’m a local musician, too” – but I gave her vague answers, or avoided the question all together. But I knew all along she’d be in there. She’s a performer, a teacher, a music therapist, a multi-instrumentalist. She’s a natural.
Now the second part of the hard work begins: writing up all those interviews, getting the last of the film developed, selecting the final photos, and assembling all of that into a book that makes sense. There’s also keeping all the musicians who participated up to date and informed. The secret to that is, it keeps me honest. I’m now accountable to that audience. They want to see the finished product!
After getting called out by my photo/tech comrade, Ken Fager, I’m back posting to Instagram for the first time in six months.
We’ll see how long it lasts. I will say it’s nice having a semi-daily posting routine again. The practice is good practice. I also have a treasure trove of photos saved up over those six months.
No, I still don’t like what Instagram’s become, but then again I don’t go after followers or likes or anything like that. I post what I post, and if people enjoy it, great.
I have been thinking lately about how much I have missed the sense of community and open conversation found in the “good old days” of Flickr before modern social media platforms took off and changed everything. Instagram snuck in as more and more cameras attached to mobile phones started to muddy the photography waters and eventually even those shooting on DSLRs and film cameras started to jump ship to “where the audience was”.
Jumping ship to “where the audience is” always comes with a trade-off in our modern social media world. There’s always a “next thing” to jump to, every few years.
Instagram was a lot of fun for a few years. I felt dedicated to it, and the audience there. It was an every-day kind of sharing site, right there with Flickr, but I kept it strictly mobile-photos-only. Flickr was for everything, Instagram just for mobile – but both were a daily habit.
Now? Instagram is Facebook, through and through. As John writes, it’s all about hype and personality. I used it to follow photography that I liked, not to see baby photos and life streaming. That’s what Facebook was for, but more and more it’s what Instagram became.
John mentions using Flickr as the anti-Instagram:
I am, perhaps, also hopeful that as Instagram gets weirder as Facebook continues to subtly manipulate it, those wanting to engage, share, and collaborate with other photographers will give Flickr a try either again or for the fist time.
What’s nice about Flickr is that it’s kind of always been there, chugging along. It had its early growth period, and its Yahoo! period, and now its SmugMug period. But I’ve always felt like I’ve gotten what I’ve paid for: a site for and about photography, by photographers.
Maybe it’s that “paying for” part that makes the difference. Maybe by paying for a yearly subscription, us Flickr users keep the site free of ads, posers, and junk. Free is open to everyone, but paid keeps the user base dedicated and smaller.
Flickr not changing all that much is probably the best part about it.
As a trained journalist, I taught myself to take good notes. Get the quote just right, especially the good ones, even if it means missing some other point.
Take good enough notes that a story comes out easily. Organize the notes by question, or by topic, and let the conversation go where it goes.
All this is to say that my notes have helped me tell good stories, even when – in the case of my musicians projects – I’m reading over my notes a year or two later. I can’t remember the details of a conversation that happened months ago, but with good notes, I can recreate it.
My portrait projects are part art statement, and part storytelling exercise, where the story part – what a person says, and the tales they tell – is as important as the pictures that come out. It’s a total package. I can’t seem to do one without the other.
Blame the journalism. Blame the need to get the full story, the background, and the good quotes on my schooling and my past experiences. It never really leaves me.
