For What Reason, This Passion?

[Tom Smart]

Like a lot of amateur enthusiasts, I punctuate my life with jags of my passion for photography. I spend time researching new equipment, learning new techniques and practicing my craft. On one weekend recently I took my first a trip with the exclusive purpose of photographing fall colors. I hadn't take a photo-only trip before, I shot E-6, which I hadn't yet done with my 4x5, and did my own developing which I had never done with E-6. I worked at making photographs all day long, moving to new locations during the high sun. I drove 300 miles, hiked 30, slept on the ground and immersed myself in making art.

The experience was gratifying, and resulted in a sort of right-brain storm which had me illustrate my photos with a story:Autumn (http://www.photo.net/photodb/presentation.tcl?presentation_id=262929)

I brought the story to work, and made a few people cry. But mostly my passion ends with my own enjoyment. I'm wondering how do other non-professional photographers find a reason for their art? I end up feeling hollow if I've accomplished art without an audiance.

So how do you find your raison d'etre? How do you create purpose for your art?

[Jim Rice]

Assuming that I ever once satisfy myself, I'll take up the audience issue.

[John D Gerndt]

I have had my degree in photography now for 21 years. Satisfaction is always fleeting. I like it when I please someone with my stuff but that is not a goal. Pleasing myself is not even the reason for the effort. I learn something from looking hard at the world and photographs are good for looking hard at something, even when they don’t work well as a pleasing art-object. I learn. I see more. I think I even hear more from studying photographs that I was there to make. Funny eh?

Cheers,

[Matthew Cordery]

to paraphrase a Far Side cartoon: "My mistake was going into large format photography for the money"

[Jay DeFehr]

My photographic efforts are dedicated almost entirely to documenting my family life. Family photos are always enjoyed and appreciated, even if they are not artistically successful. I am creating an archive of images for the generations of my family that will follow. That's reason enough for me.

[John Cook]

For me, personal photography is a method to line my walls with images of the good things in life. By editing (or cropping) the yucky stuff, I can create a kind of perfect sanctuary from the world.

I used to dream of endless world travel, gathering photographic trophies of the Eiffel Tower and the pyramids, etc. But exploding Muslims have made air travel with LF all but impossible for all but the brave (or foolhardy?).

So I am now concentrating on those things close to home which gave me so much pleasure in my childhood:

I lived next to a fallow farm which bordered a swamp. There were no computer arcades nor SUV’s to whisk me away to soccer tournaments. I learned instead about frogs, little green snakes, skunk cabbage and poison ivy (the hard way). Plenty of room to shoot a Daisy BB gun.

There were no school busses to drive me to elementary school. Every winter morning my mother put my coat over the steam radiator in the front hall to heat the inside, before sending me off for a two-block walk through the falling snow. I remember walking home through the muddy gooey unpaved sidewalks, being careful not to allow the suction to pull off my Tom McCanns. And how the mud had frozen by the next morning on the way back, full of deep shoe-prints filled with thin brittle white ice.

In the summer heat our home was not hermetically sealed and refrigerated. The windows were open, green-striped canvas awnings extended, a large aluminum pitcher of fresh iced tea (with real lemons) in front of a shiny chrome Westinghouse oscillating table fan, and the fragrance of lilac drifting in the dining room window.

Summers were all about Cape Cod and the sound of waves lapping against the side of the old wooden rowboat at the lake. Autumn meant fresh unpasteurized cider and tumbling in piles of leaves. Winters began with Christmas trees and ended with sickening amounts of Valentine candy. Spring was devoted to yo-yo season and water-pistol season. I wonder what Miss Murphy ever did with all those items she so sternly confiscated from us during class. By early May, her bottom desk drawer was bulging.

Looking past the third-world graffiti and the deserted ramshackle factories here in the Rust Belt, many of these wonderful little childhood vignettes can still be photographed.

And the best part is that I can be home for lunch. Tomato soup, a baloney sandwich and a Devil Dog. Neat!

[matthew blais]

John, you just composed one of the best images, no camera necessary...thanks.

[domenico Foschi]

I don't think photography , like any other kind of life long passion, is something that we chose.
When we realize that we have the knack for something , i interpret it more like an assignment that is given to us from above or whatever is your view about a superior being.
I will never forget the experience i had as a 20 years old looking at some images of the Death Valley by the great French Photographer: Janloup Sieff: a bolt of energy ran through my body , and then i undersdtood that my search for something to do withmy life was ended.
Photography since then has been for me what has structured my choices in life , it has also saved my life in two instances.
For me it is about the pursue of beauty, in its many forms, it is to show the world that no matter what they do to this planet the hope is always alive because beauty can't be destroyed ; an artist will always find beauty in things.
But is also a mistake to think that the reason why we create is only one .
It is like an onion made out of many layers .
I shoot for memories , for myself , i shoot because i was made in God's image (the archetype of creation), i shoot to seek beauty and give it back (when i don't fail), i do it because it is cheaper than terapy ( no wait ,cancel that!), and opens doors in me that i need to walk through...

[Robert Musgjerd]

Domenico you couldn't have said it better. Like many other things in life I have stopped looking for a
purpose . I create pictures because down dee p where it really counts down where I'm shure the truth
is I believe this is what I'm supposed to do

[Ralph Barker]

Yeah, what Domenico said.

Besides, view cameras are such chick magnets. ;-)

[ronald lamarsh]

Man has sought to express himself since the dawn of time from cave painting to the heads on easter island. We all seem to have some inner force that drives us to create works that communicate our interpretation of the divine at work in the universe. The lucky ones give voice to this drive through music ,dance, or any of the expressive arts because it is so close to the surface of their being. It doesn't matter one wit if they make a living at it or not; or if it is recognized, for them it enriches their lives and understanding at the same time effecting those around them in a positive way: from the curious onlooker who wonders why anyone would drag that huge camera around to their close friends and family. By participating in this way we as artists help to raise ourselves and all of mankind to a higher level of being which, I think, is what life is all about. So Rock on Dudes