There’s a ton of opportunity in the photography world right now. We’ve accepted this narrative that photography is in some sort of decline, like the ability to dedicate your life to photography is getting harder and harder and harder.
But it’s simply not true.
Maybe it’s gotten annoying by now, but I keep talking about the need for “story” in our images. I wanted to expand on that idea, because, it can be hard to figure out how to apply it. Sometimes we’re too busy searching that we miss what’s happening right in front of us. First, it starts with asking yourself what you want. If being a photographer or artist is what you want, go a step further. Why? What do you have to say? Where is your camera pointed all the time? Who are you?
Next, you’ll have to keep asking yourself these questions over a long period of time. I’m writing this at the end of 2022, and I have a clearer idea about things than I did in the beginning of this year. At the beginning of 2022, I had a clearer idea about what I wanted and who I was than I did in the beginning of 2021. And so on and so forth.
It’s funny, looking back, I always think, “Man, I was so dumb back then. How could I not see it?” But we do the best we have with the tools we have at the time. As long as we are asking these questions, I think we’ll mostly stay on track.
I’ve talked to a lot of photographers over the years. A lot of the talk is usually in the negative, photographers love fixating on the things they don’t have anymore, and their perceived negative changes to the industry. Being a photographer is hard, and if you talk to other photographers a lot it can be tough to not internalize that a bit. I’ll be honest, I haven’t been super involved in the photographer community over the years due to trying to stay away from that stuff. Are they all wrong? Not completely, I understand why many photographers have a doom and gloom view of the industry. But I think many photographers struggle to delineate from how they feel about “the industry” and how they feel about themselves. Misery loves company, and the photography world tends to welcome misery with open arms.
But, photography is a communication tool. We forget that. It’s a method of recording and communicating an image, and it has its practical uses, as well as its artistic ones. When I take a picture of the front bumper of my truck after I hit a deer, I’m letting my insurance company know the extent of the damage. When I take a picture of an incredible sunset, I’m wanting others to come as close to the enjoyment of that moment as I was. In the same way, portraits are communicating perception the photographer or subject wants to have of themselves or a scene. That’s all we’re doing: Telling stories of a moment.
“Misery Loves Company” is the idea that someone is hurt or upset about something, and it spills out of them. They want to vent and involve others in their troubles in order to attempt to justify and ease their own pain. They want someone to commiserate with them, to tell them that they have a right to feel miserable about their situation. If photography is a communication tool, then photographers are ripe for both sides of this: Maybe you’re extremely happy and you want to share it with others, or maybe you’re totally miserable and want others to know. Either way, photographers carry a loaded gun with which to express those feelings.
We are all equipped with ability to tell a valuable story. We do it all the time whether we realize it or not, we just need to learn how to communicate it a way people can understand.
I started The Small Town Photo Project for myself, initially. I was taking a look at my life, a life of travel and going to cool places, and then I ended up living in small town America. Sure, I made choices that led me there, but I was trying to make sense of it all in my head. Some days I’d wake up kinda bummed about it, and other days I’d wake up really enjoying my surroundings. In my 20s, I really struggled with constantly looking at the exit rather than investing in what was right in front of me and learning to enjoy that. So, The Small Town Photo Project was my attempt to embrace my surroundings, and years later, I’m not sure I could leave my small town lifestyle. This one photo project helped me see a little clearer. It helped me realize that no matter where you live, if you invest in the community around you, everyone basically lives in a small town. Our goal as humans, in a weird way, is actually to live in a small town. We want support, safety, and community. The project is morphing into something else now, probably because I’m morphing along with it.
The camera doesn’t just help you communicate to others, it can also help you communicate to yourself.
One project, one goal. That’s where the story is told. Everything that comes out of that process are also part of the story. But in order to find something, you just have to start out by heading in a certain direction.
I get bogged down in focusing on too much. I really need only one or two tasks at a time, if I’m trying to do too much, I’ll end up doing nothing at all. Either that, or I’ll do a bunch of stuff badly. Focus on one main photo project has always been my hack for pushing forward in photography. I certainly really didn’t understand how to tell a story when I started, but now, I’m starting to understand. Now that The Small Town Photo Project is a few years in, people are beginning to tell my story back to me. People are beginning to pick up on things that I never really thought about, and that can only happen from sticking with it over time.
Creating all types of different images is fun. The world is a smorgasbord of opportunity and things to look at. I’ve said many, many times: You have to take a lot of pictures in order to find the pictures you actually want to take. But there comes a point where there needs to be some sort of through-line in your work, a “hobby horse”, a repetitive theme. I just saw the Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion, and it had nearly identical themes to the first film, but that didn’t make it less enjoyable. In fact, it helped me understand the writer/director Rian Johnson a bit more. There’s nothing wrong with repetition. There’s a spot on the way to Chattanooga from South Carolina that I have been photographing nearly every time I drive by for over 10 years now. The repetition actually probably gives it more value. If I felt like it was getting overly repetitive, then that means it was probably losing its meaning to me. If it has meaning to you, repetition is irrelevant. If there’s no common “repetitive” theme in your work, you probably need to keep creating a bunch of different stuff until you stumble upon what you’re looking for.
One project. That should be the goal. Maybe it’s short term, maybe it’s long term. A practical application of what I’m talking about when I talk about “story” would be to focus on the things you want to focus on. It’s all very philosophical, but before we sell prints or become artists or dedicate our lives to a medium of any kind, we have to dig deep and find those “themes” within us. Those things that fascinate us. The things that we can’t stop thinking about. The things that we can’t stop telling others about.
One project.