Voice

What does this mean?

Does any of it matter?

What am I doing with my life?

These are questions that I'm sure most people have asked themselves at one point or another. It always comes at different times, but ever since I started down this road I have found myself asking more of these questions.

Why do I do this?

Sometimes I just feel uninspired. Sometimes I hate the photos I take. I ask myself questions like "Are these any good?" "What is good anyway?" I look at pictures I've taken in the past and I think "This is crap" or "This is uninspired..."

The question that's at the head of my thoughts... that I think of after almost every photo is "What am I saying with this?"

Photos, after all, are meant to be shared. No one who does this is content creating image after image only to keep them in some super secret hidden library. No one chooses this path in hopes that no one will ever see their work. So what I find myself wondering is what exactly it is i'm trying to say with my photos. With the usual work I do (weddings, events, et all) they aren't exactly complicated messages.

"She's happy."
"He's nervous."
"These people are having fun."
"This father is proud."
And so on and so forth.

Where am I?

Are they just moments in time? Places I've been? People I know?  Is it a memory? Are they hopes?

Ideas? 

Dreams?

Are they life?

I'm not one to complain, and I shouldn't either. I'm very fortunate that I get to subsist by doing something that I love. Sometimes though I feel like that love gets lost. I feel like I get distracted. There's this shiny veneer coating that says what I do is glamorous...and sometimes it's really not. I get content keeping my bills paid. I'm comfortable being able to afford certain luxuries for myself, for my dog, and for my girlfriend.


And yet...sometimes I'll look at my photos and think "These are empty, hollow, meaningless."

Where am I going?

Don't get me wrong. I don't have some grandiose view of what I do. I won't cure cancer with photography. That's a job for someone that...well for someone that's researching cancer cures. There may never be any great books or collections made from my work. It won't start a revolution. What I'm doing will probably not have any major impact on the world. In spite of everything I see, no, everything that I know is wrong with the world... I can't fix it with photography. I think about that, and it's depressing.

But you know what?

I look over my body of work so far and I do see something. I see a perspective. Is it unique? That I can't say for sure. Is it good? I'll leave that up to others to decide/worry about.

What I do know for sure about it is this: It is me.