Reviving Photography

It feels great to have completed two recent posts: Death Valley & Huntington Library. Was really delightful writing a photo travel essay again. It’s been a minute since I’ve posted and even longer since I’ve had the camera out.

At times I go through phases where I get shy or disappointed about the camera and I put it away. Feeling dorky about shooting photos or lacking creativity in my work. For my photos that means many shots are starting to look too similar and I’m not challenging myself sufficiently to find greater depth and mastery with what I’m pointing the lens at. But I’m always enormously interested in looking at photography and continuing to find new and unique aspects to shoot from. The one element that I find on the street or in candid moments with loved ones. 

I re-watched one of my favorite documentaries recently, Everybody Street (2013) which follows a number of renowned photographers in New York City discussing all the different angles and experiences of the craft. I quickly became re-inspired by their stories, experiences, and how the camera brings creators into the world. 

Continuing to study how film, directors and directors of photography get creative with their visual applications has been another source of inspiration. Looking at how they frame shots and seek out different angles to tell the story.  I was recently inspired by the last scene in the movie, The Fabelmans (2022), where the young boy finally gets his break with a well-known Hollywood Director. The man asks the boy what he thinks about a picture on the wall, and the boy doesn’t really notice anything,. He pushes the boy to look closer, and the young man sees that the horizon is below where it should be, and the boy learns quickly that one strange unique piece is part of what made that artist successful.

There are a lot of photographers that are out there, shooting the same thing and I keep thinking about how I can push myself to capture it differently and where I can place the camera to tell my story differently. This practice can be done with anything and I hadn’t realized that until I attended a Dina Litovsky photography webinar where she spoke about her night photography in New York City.

I thought to myself I don’t have New York City. I only have San Clemente. What is there for me to photograph here? The pier? Beach? Sunsets? All of those are things that are relentlessly photographed and shared on the community's Facebook pages on Instagram. The exciting part of it is the subtle nuances that only your eye catches. Because you’re the only one standing there with the camera, or when you find a new way to look at something that’s been looked at 1 trillion times. That’s what I’m searching for that lightning-in-a-bottle moment and something unique.

It was time to spend some time this week going back through my library, reviewing photos that I’m fond of to look for new ways to frame and angle them - or think about how I would shoot them differently. It’s been exciting focusing on creating tighter shots, and revisiting fond memories with friends and strangers out on the street corners.

I bought a series of three coffee books this week by Gray Malin, a fine art photographer, who photographed beaches and coastal scenes from the air. He was another much-needed boost of inspiration, finally reading his story after having followed him for several years. It was uplifting to learn that he got his start where you see many other photographers - at local street fairs, peddling their work to the local community. It was exciting to hear more of that story reading the first few pages of Coastal this week, hearing that one special moment when Gray first caught the idea of snapping beach scenes from the air, and how he found his way to bring that vision to life through conversations with people at his modest photo booth, having learned what’s important to people, and that there was a keen interest for what he saw through the lens.

The last and final bit of inspiration was a local gal, Lindsey Bro, who I met briefly at yoga. She’s a freelance creative type, living her best life traveling and working with a wide variety of clients (something I also aspire to). I really like the aesthetic of her Instagram posts @ladybro and her storytelling capability. I recently saw that she had also released a photo book, Thermal, inspired by healing with heat. 

I keep writing and thinking and writing and thinking, and I have the camera back out again, and I’m really excited at the prospect of continuing to push myself through the lens and assemble my own work to be published.

Look for my first photo book called Street, featuring a wide variety of street corners in intersections from across the globe.