Baby Steps

Why do I photograph?

I have been taking pictures for as long as I can remember. In some ways, all of my earliest memories are there because of a picture, even if I didn’t take it. The rest of my memories are gone or faded to the point of a whispering of a brief moment.

Photography became how I saw and remembered the world, my days, and my life. Since the age of thirteen I have found comfort in immortalizing what I saw through a camera lens. And although I underwent significant personal changes which impacted my desire to photograph for a few years, today, at age thirty-one, the call to make images for myself has returned. I never stopped taking pictures, but for a while I only did so commercially, to earn a living. I got decently good at doing that and I am still growing my business, but the passion for the art of photography had given way to the necessity of the job of photography. Now, I find myself yearning to come back to my beloved art practice.

The road to return has been unclear though. How could I possibly go back to somewhere I was when the person I was then was someone entirely different? This isn’t a journey home, it is a new path in a new direction. Perhaps there are still some remaining traits of who I used to be that may guide me this way or that, but the majority of me comes at this empty. I have no preconceived notions of what to do, where to point the camera, or when to press the shutter. I’m exploring my surroundings and this medium in a similar manner to how I first did in my teenage years.

My environment has also changed drastically from what it used to be. Where before I was always surrounded by urban activity and the comings and goings of city-dwellers, I now find myself in a small town of 1,500 inhabitants and one commercial “Main” street. This is not to say that there isn’t anything to photograph, but that my eye is gazing upon an entirely new world. The landscape is vast, the paint is chipping, the bikes are in the yard. Dogs barking and deer crossings, the ripple of the river and the fluttering shade through the trees. I like it here and I like taking these slow walks - they match the pace of my recovery as an artist. There’s no way I could come back to it running at full speed and pick up exactly where I left off. These are baby steps I’m taking. Baby steps.