My mother and I on safari this January. Photographs by Cynthia Haynes. On Friday I re-posted Life is Short. The comments and the emails I’ve had since that original post have lit me on fire in a way I can’t describe, reminding me how deeply we can live when we get intentional about it. It also reminds me of the …
Thoughts on Done
I sat earlier this week around the coffee table in my loft with three very close friends, all of them thinkers and artists and several margaritas into the evening. We talked, as photographers and storytellers do, about our art and the art of others, and the struggle we all love enough that we keep doing it. One of the things …
Follow Your Passion?
As trendy as it has been recently for people to write about doing things fueled by our passion, it looks like we’ve now swung the other way, fatigued, I suspect, by all this talk of passion, which like any hot-burning fire, takes constant fuel to feed it. No wonder we’re tiring of the word “passion”. But it would be a …
On Authenticity, Again.
Yesterday I wrote an article about authenticity. This is part two. Photography can be a lens through which we look at the world, and in that world find wonder and experiences we might never have without the camera. But sometimes it’s a little too easy to see our own reflection in the viewfinder. And from there a little too easy …
On Authenticity
It’s been a while since I wrote about vision and voice in the life of the photographer. Recent conversations have pulled me back into those old discussions we used to have here on this blog. One of those recent conversations was with someone wrestling with the idea of authenticity. Was her voice authentic? And how much mucking around with new …
Toward Mastery
I’m uncomfortable with the notion of mastery. It’s not that I don’t believe we can’t, in some broad way, master a craft – gain a level of comfort and expertise that the tools become an extension of ourselves and we wield them purely through muscle memory. I do. In fact if it’s that comfort that’s an indicator of our approach …
Awake Enough.
I was talking to a photographer recently who said something I’ve heard, in so many different words, from so many of us, including myself. She’s taking a trip, going somewhere epic, somewhere she’s obviously been dreaming about, a place that’s already well lodged into her heart and imagination even though she’s never been there. She said she was worried it …
Stirring the Paint
It’s been a long time since I did one of these posts, but aside from a biography about Vincent Van Gogh that’s as entertaining as it is depressing, I’ve got very little on the go right now. I’m just past my 4th week in a cast and on crutches (catch up with that story here), and going a little stir-crazy. …
Automatic Art, A Rant.
A year ago I walked by a place that does framing here in Vancouver. The sign in the window said something like, “Get it framed! Turn your photos into art!” I pulled out my iPhone and made a quick photograph, shook my head and walked on. I only just remembered this because yesterday a banner ad online said something that …
The Gift
The gift of photography is that it teaches us to truly see. This is as true of the photographer with the camera to his eye as it is to the person who experiences the photographs. The camera, subject to so many more limitations than the human eye, the limitations of the frame especially, excels because of those limitations, not despite …