Here’s a question for you…
What does it look like to be a photographer without access to the outside world? What does it mean for a photographer to not be able to post her pictures for others to see and affirm?
A few of us are sitting around the large glass table in the community room with our computers out. Some of us are editing our pictures of Africa. Some of us are writing the blog posts that have been put on our hearts, but all of us know that we will not be posting anything until the infamous tomorrow finally arrives. Tomorrow has been the promise for the last couple days. Tomorrow you will have internet so you can talk with your loved ones and update your supporters on what you have been doing. Tomorrow you can post your photographs.
This tomorrow has been especially difficult for me.
I have been to Africa before, but never as a photographer. The culture, the sunsets, the style of dress the people wear, the geckos, the banana stands… I have been dying to photograph it all.
I pull out my camera, take the shot, dump my card on my external hard drive, pull an image into Photoshop… and… then wait for tomorrow… the tomorrow that hasn’t come…
I start looking at them all again… Are they even any good? Is a photographer a good photographer if no one falls in love with what she photographs? What if the amount of likes on the photo is zero because she can’t even get it out of Africa in front of people. Does that make it less of a photo?
What is the root of this question really? Am I honestly worried about not being a good photographer or is it something else? Am I worried about falling on the face of the earth for a little over a week and being forgotten?
In a world falling quickly into the need for an incredibly large amount of positive affirmation and attention drawn to each of our individual lives what does it look like for a photographer to just sit on her photographs?
For me this looks like a good time for me to begin to believe that my pictures are actually good because I love them and I lived them. It looks like me slowing down enough to take a photo for the pure pleasure of taking a good photograph and not for the business side of it all or the publicity or the future job opportunities that may stem from a perfectly composed image.
As an artist it is easy to get lost in the messiness of expectation and loose the beauty that is right before me. This time away from the outside world has hurt because I have missed my people and I have missed hearing that my work is good and worth seeing. I have had to stay present.
Once again Christ has stripped away my crutches and forced me to look to him to find my worth.
What happens when you take away a photographers ability to publish her work?
She goes and becomes better because of it.
All for now from the eyes of a storyteller…
