It's Yours. Own It.

by Dotti

Have you read the latest David DuChemin book, The Visual Toolbox? I highly recommend it. As usual, everything he says is right on the money. In this particular book, he lays out 60 exercises to help you take stronger photos. I’m really just working through it, lots more to cover but already he has me thinking. Here’s what he says that has been playing through my mind for days now:

What is important now is that you begin to recognize your vision, and own it as yours. You are obligated to no one but yourself to make the photographs you do, so make them your way.

Isn’t that great? Own it as ours, make our photos our way.

There were some excellent comments on my last post and in a couple of Facebook conversations on The Studio|Online page. All of these great comments not only resonated with me, they have been playing through my mind since that post, two weeks ago, telling me that I am not alone in my journey with still life photography (and indeed, photography in general}.

It seems there are others whose vision of still life photography leans more to the ‘simple’ rather than ‘styled’ approach. Many in the group were feeling as I did and just weren’t sure how or where they fit in. Once we realized there were others, we began to talk more freely among ourselves and that’s what motivated me to write today’s post. I think it’s the perfect follow up to my post two weeks ago.

Too often, we let ourselves be influenced by the beautiful work we see others do and too often either try to copy it or compare it to our own work, convinced we don’t measure up. You know what? Either approach is self-defeating and will cause our creative muscles to go limp before we can push the shutter buttons on our cameras.

Seeking inspiration in the work of other photographers is a good way to learn and to improve. But at the end of the day, we have to see and shoot what makes us happy.

Kim Klassen expressed it beautifully in her comment on my recent post:

I think it's so important that we follow our own heart ... do what we love ...
I would never want people to think there's only one way to shoot stills …

And this is true of all kinds of photography. There is no right or wrong. We have to shoot what makes our hearts sing, what brings smiles to our lips, what nourishes our souls.

It comes back to that age old lesson that we’ve all heard since we were children: be true to yourself. Well, the same is true of our art. Let’s start being true to our vision, putting our vision out there and let’s do it with love and joy and pride.

What about you? Have you recognized your vision yet or are you, like me, still looking?