Gold staircase. Another of those shots that no one but me likes.

Taken with my iPhone in the IBM lobby in RTP.  Granite interleaved sculpture at the base of a curving staircase.  Edited in Picassa to apply a Holga affect.  One of the very last images I did before learning about iPhone editing,  NEVER AGAIN will I do my work in Picassa.

Anyway, I thought this image was pretty good and used it as my entry in the “best of the month” photo contest at Briar Chapel, where it went over with a big soft thud.  But that taught me something life-changing:  from now on, my photography is only for me.  I will never again create something with the intention of “pleasing” or “impressing” someone else.  If art isn’t personal and expressive, it’s not worth anything and there is no reason to do it.

So from now on, I’m letting my photography express what I see and feel and what I want to say about the world. I’ve talked before about being competitive, driving myself too hard, and it’s that kind of thing exactly that takes all the fun out of photography.  In the past, many people have looked at my pictures and said “you should be a professional, these are so good!”  and I feel all the fun just drain out of me.  If it must come up to professional standards, it is no longer (for me, for now) a creative journey, it’s about pleasing someone else.

Photography is an exploration of the world, a new way of seeing the world around me, and of showing it to myself in new ways.  You can go through life never seeing anything, your eyes just gliding over and off of things that are either totally familiar, or so unfamiliar that your eye never latches on.  When you learn to look, and see, you begin to think. And when you THINK, you’re no longer just creating, you are revealing something to the world.

Long story short, no more contests.  Express, don’t impress.