Why Photography?


Why are you involved in photography?
Possibly keeping visual records of significant events, special people and places?
I believe that constitutes most of the people using cameras, but why are we, Photographers, involved?

I cannot speak for the others, but let me share with you why I am involved in Photography.

1. Photography has given me a different view of the world around me. I see things that I missed before I was introduced to the camera. This one benefit is the reason I have shared my interest with my daughter and others that have showed a desire to expand their hobby.

2. Photography gives me the avenue to change reality and interpret what is in my creative head.

3. I use photography to overcome my shyness (yes, believe it or not) in meeting strangers. It is such an easy tool, or excuse, to start to talk to someone. I believe that it is a great compliment to take someone’s picture. It tells them that they are interesting, or unique or even beautiful!

4. I enjoy knocking down the walls and stretching the envelope and trying new techniques and, by being with other Photographers, learning how others see the world around me.

5. I like what photography has forced me to do, like getting up at 4AM or 5AM, to go somewhere and watch the sun rise and the sheer beauty of nature; or going out in a snowstorm and capturing the effects of a 40 mile an hour wind, a rainstorm or the beauty of a snowflake at night.

6. I enjoy being alone in the stillness of the environment only to hear the scurrying of a squirrel, the pecking of a woodpecker, the rustling of Silver Dollar Eucalyptus leaves, the washing of the waves on a beach, the call of seagulls, and even the touch of a velvet leaf or the coldness of a marble statue. Photography wakens the senses, all of the senses. I remember the smells of a fish market in Osaka, the scent of burning incense at the temples in Kyoto, the growling of the volcano in Hawaii, the cold at the top of the mountains looking at the Everest, feeling the roughness of the skin of an elephant, feeling the squish of the leaves in the rain forest in Burma, the wind at the top of the ski lift in Mammoth mountain and shooting through my tears when my children were born. Sight, hearing, smell, touch and even taste when you accidentally touch your lips after processing a print and taste the hypo.

7. I love to learn new things, especially in Photography. The use of a 50mm lens screwed in backwards to give you 1:1 magnification, using a reversing ring, multiple exposures never being certain of what you are going to get, moving the camera on purpose during the exposure and shooting with black and white film hoping to capture the textures and tones that you cannot really see with eyes that capture only color, the surprises with colors shifting when shooting at night, or in different lighting conditions, cross processing film, shooting through different materials, the reflections in water or in a piece of glass, and even using the “wrong” lenses for the “wrong” applications like the 500mm reflex, with an extension tube, for close ups.

8. Using the ultra-wide and fisheye lenses!!!!!!! Why? Because they provide a view of the world that few have seen (or maybe want to see) and because they are the most difficult lenses to use in order to obtain a good image, as they have such wide angle of views and therefore capture so much of the world around us.

9.Sharing and watching the work of other photographers improve and grow has been one of my best “rewards”.

10.Giving others copies of pictures of subjects that are different and, hopefully, are of good quality, and bring great smiles to their faces.

There are many more reasons, many personal, private and even unexplainable. I think of all the great photographers in history and wonder what their reasons were. Why do we still enjoy images created with simple equipment, under difficult circumstances and still, today, just “wow” us? I have more questions than answers and will continue to learn.

Whether I have talent or not will be up to others to judge long after I am gone.

I will leave a legacy, mainly for my two children, of a true love of creative imaging and they, and their children, will have a window to who I was while I spent this fleeting moment we call life.

Trevor