(This is the first photo I put on Flickr with my current DSLR...just figuring out how to use it)
I first got interested in photography when I was in high school. I took a summer course at Moore College of Art in photography as well as a figure drawing class. Learning to develop my own film was a thrill…standing shoulder to shoulder with my fellow students in the pitch darkness, using only touch and memory to spool the film onto its metal frame. I spent that month taking photos around Logan Square fountain, mostly—the children splashing in the water and sitting in the sunlight.
My father then revealed to me that he still had the enlarger he used when he had the photography bug back when I was a baby. He set about helping me create a darkroom in an extra room on our third floor (my brother was already at college). I did not take full advantage of it, however. I must have developed film up there at least once and made prints, but I have no recollection of it happening. I do recall spending the rest of the summer taking photos of everything and anything, and trying very hard to be ‘artistic’. I should dig out some of those shots and scan them in to share sometime. They aren’t all awful.
I don’t recall making a decision to stop doing it, but somehow it fell to the wayside as so many things did as I became more interested in drinking and doing drugs and fretting over all the things I couldn’t control (it was a full-time job). All I know is that by the time I got to college (miraculously), I wasn’t thinking about photos anymore. And then I was thinking and writing poetry. And you know, wasting my life away.
After I got sober I moved in with my parents. I had my daughter and my father bought a digital camera in order to document his first grandchild as much as possible. He began lending it to me when I went on trips anywhere, and slowly but surely, the bug for photography started to wake up. I wanted my own camera again. My dad got a new camera at some point and let me keep the little point & shoot, but I felt limited after a while. I borrowed that camera a lot, though until my dad let me “hold it” for him. He got another digital P&S.
One thing I do remember from when I was a kid and then again as an adult is that people enjoyed my photos and I would regularly receive compliments on my “good eye.” When Pete and I were dancing around how we truly felt about each other, he had already been encouraging my photos. I was occasionally taking self-portraits for “Self-Portrait Day” which started as a weekly way to see fellow bloggers and developed into an awesome website created by Michele of Mihow.com and built by her genius husband Toby Joe. The photos of myself and of other things became a way to share more of my life with blog readers. I joined Flickr merely as a way to host photosets.
After our wedding, Pete suggested we use some of our wedding money to get me a camera I wanted. I was drooling all the way to the store. I got a Canon Digital Rebel XT and fell head over heels for it even though I barely knew how to use it. I learned, and I learned by doing. I was still only really sharing the photos by posting them to Flickr but linking to them from my blog. I had not at all taken advantage of the community available to me there. Then one day a fellow blogger who happens to take amazing photographs himself invited me to a group on Flickr called “365 Days.”
The rest might be called “history” except for the fact that I’m still in it and still have a lot to learn. And the more I learn, the better I am able to translate what I “see” into photographs to share.
I took a self-portrait every single day (and no, I did not miss a day or cheat) for two years, from August 2006 until August 2008. I decided to stop so I could put my energies into applying for grants, submit to juried shows, and setting up this site. Well I applied for one grant and set up this site so far. We seek progress, not perfection, right? During my second year of self-portraits I made a very concerted effort to point my camera outward as much as I pointed it towards myself, and I think I succeeded—especially when comparing the two years. After having spent several months now hardly ever pointing the camera at myself, I’m missing it. But rather than dive back into an everyday project I’m trying to cultivate the discipline to work on a series idea I’ve been mulling.
I am learning to own the titles “Photographer” and “Artist” by repeating them to anyone who asks me what I do. One thing I fear is repeating old patterns and letting this fall by the wayside. To let this be a time I look back on and say, “remember when I was into photography?” I need to own it.
I'm an artist. My medium is photography.
Getting new business cards will help. ;-)
