path
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I got my first camera when I was about six or seven years old. It was an inexpensive point and shoot, a plastic “kid’s camera” which ate 110 film for its subsistence. I remember dragging it everywhere, taking photos of family, friends, and even Honest Abe (courtesy of a summer trip to Washington DC). I loved the camera, but I didn’t use it to see. I used it to participate.
Come junior high, I had graduated to the Kodak Disc camera. It was a new technology. It was sleek in design. It was…like…totally awesome, ya know. My photos from this time period are classic 1980’s adolescent cheese. My friends decked out in their new wave threads doing pyramids in front of the school. Boy did I love the camera, but I didn’t use it to see. I used it to participate.
Then there was that time in college when I borrowed my mom’s nifty Minolta 35mm camera to take on my trip to Washington DC. That didn’t go so well. After a night of capturing “great” Inaugural party shots, I ended up leaving the camera in the back of a taxi. It was a sad day. I loved that camera, but I didn’t use it to see. I used it to participate.
In February of 2005, I discovered blogging. My first blogger friend was Jeremy Hawkins. He was (and is!) a gifted poet who had been, at the time, churning out the good stuff at a blog called Notes on the Revival. One day I noticed a unique photo posted in Jeremy’s blog, an image that appeared a nice compliment to his work. I clicked on the photo, and I was instantly transported into what might be best described as my photographic womb.
Flickr. It changed everything.
For the first time in my life, I was shooting with intent. I cared about the image, not just the way the taking of that image lent itself to participation…in life. For the first time in my life I saw my surroundings, and I had a very real and accessible way of sharing my “line of vision” with others. It was exciting. It was liberating. It stuck.
Today, I find myself wanting to start something, wanting to make my foray into photography official. Kind of like the scene depicted in the photo, Path, I find myself surrounded by something wonderful, something beautiful, and I know that that very wonderment and beauty is leading me somewhere. I do. But the thick fog — it all at once makes my first steps exciting and unnerving.
Slight Clutter’s Photography Journal will chronicle my journey into the professional world of photography. I hope you’ll join me as I make my way.
