Don’t ever let the fact that you can’t be perfect keep you from doing your best.
July 4, 2010 at 11:45 am , by Haley
Listen.
Kurt Vonnegut said it best (and doesn’t he, always?) when he said, “the arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.” So, when your outlet for creating an adequate life-once-removed is renovated for revenue, how do you cope? Profit shouldn’t drive your dreams, lest it chauffeur them richly into death’s own obligation pit.
So what’s to do?
My photography has always just been that: mine. There are plenty of folks around town—people I’ve come to know well and even idolize—who do wonderful work for weddings and birthdays and friends and parties and couples and musicians alike and get paid for it and live well enough with their passions and their work existing as the same thing.
I want so badly to create for myself a similar dream-world, I’ve just yet to develop the sort of social skills required to do so.
Or something.
Now, I realize that I’m a measly 22 years old and that, a good majority of the time, I’m not even certain what I think in relation to how I feel. But, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few years, it’s that there’s a certain percentage of people that, should you point a camera at ‘em, magically flash-evolve into a creature whose most admirable quality is a sense of stolid embarrassment. It’s as though my camera is an oncoming train and they’ve become too horror-struck to save their own lives and instead just stand there and wait for death. Ugh.
I also know that should these petrified people desire “professional” pictures of themselves, that one ought to be very prepared in the ways of improve and props; kites, fake flowers, a toy ball— really anything to play with is essential. There’s nothing worse than having someone pay you to take a good picture—or, worse, plural: pictures—of them, but refuse to loosen up and allow you any sort of creative license.
I mean, fuck.
I am here to shake my head, punch buttons on my camera, eyeball perfect strangers, ask odd questions, demonstrate silly postures, pose and touch people I’ve just met, and wait, wait, wait for light. I know it’s a sill thing to wait for, but I need you fucking people to just be patient and wait with me. I need you to relax, breathe a little and just pretend like you like each other. Get close. Laugh a little.
Here comes the cluetrain!
Don’t be a dick. Try to understand.
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