A new phase, new images!

Racing the Ferry

I recently revamped my website  (check it out here!) and in the process reviewed my various folders and images hoping to find a better way to manage them.  I didn’t make much headway in the daunting task of creating a neater hierarchy, but I was struck by the themes that recurred, even though I have not been shooting with specific themes or collections in mind.

Since I began considering myself a”travel photographer” I realized I haven’t really been shooting from an art perspective;  i.e. I wasn’t trying to convey a particular meaning or tell a story beyond what each individual image portrayed.  It’s funny how the subconscious works though since as I tried to create some order out of the thousands of images, the themes that emerged are ones that I have been interested in since way back when I took my first Photography 101 course.  Light and shadow, movement (and stillness) and objects/subjects that convey particular emotions; these are all themes that I gravitated towards then and it’s clear from my overall collection of images that I still do.

So my “new phase” is really more of a return to my mindset and approach to photography as it was previously.  Without realizing it, as I commercialized my photography (first shooting weddings and later as a vendor at art markets) my priorities flipped from shooting for the sheer love of creating the images to creating work concerned with their marketability. I have missed creating images intended to provoke a more expressive, visceral impact. As a result,  I am more excited now about going out and just shooting than I have been in a long time. I am already considering the collections and subjects that I want to shoot and I look forward to sharing them!