VIRB

I have a photoblog and there is no theme to it, which makes me think... what is the point in this whole thing? Is it to please people or is it for me and the daily journey through life? I frequent many photoblogs and always there is a consistent theme running throughout them... Well maybe not always, but much of the time there is a look to someone's photos. A look that is very nice. It seems as though they have mastered something and are doing are that on their photoblog. A sort of showcase of a style of work... This generally brings people to their site, giving them many "hits" if you will. This makes them rise to the top of the blogging world and thus giving them recognition in the blogging universe.

So, again I ask myself why I am doing this, because I have been uploading photos for coming up on two and a half years. I know that there are many people out there that have been blogging for a very short time and have risen quickly to the "top," whatever that means. I am trying to think back at why I started this daily photoblog. Well, I was inspired by the work of Justin, from chromogenic.net. So, I began to take a photo a day. I tried to document my journey through life with a camera. I was pretty diligent in keeping to taking a photo each and every day, uploading it and going to the next day... Everyday doing this, over and over again. It was a very good way to get me shooting all the time, teaching me a whole lot about myself and the beauty of photography.

I started getting busy and traveling, so the whole uploading on a daily basis was hard, so I moved to trying to just upload as often as I could, thinking that it would make the couple people that frequent my site (i.e. my mom and dad) happy. Knowing that I was putting a different photo up everyday would keep people coming back for more. This makes me happy, because it tells me that my parents are checking up on me all the time.

The thing though that is interesting to me is the whole commenting part of a photoblog. Do we post images that we hope are good enough to have someone comment on, or are we posting because the photo we put up means something to us and therefore want to remember it at a later date, down the road?

Looking back over the last few years, I can see a tremendous difference in the photos I took then and the photos I am taking now. I am a professional photographer... I never would have thought I would be one, but I am and I love it more than words can express, but I still get caught up in the numbers. The numbers of how many photos I upload, the number of people that have come to my site, the number of hits, the number of comments, the numbers mean nothing if the photos mean nothing.

So, in conclusion... I am loving this thing called photography. I am all over the place with the photos I take. I get on one style of photography and right when I get in a groove, something else peaks my interest. So, what does this mean? It means I explore it. I try something new. I experiment and see what else I can learn about the beautiful art that is photography. I won't get in to all those different things and what they are, but I will say that I love every part of the photographic journey I have been on and I don't want the love to go away. Whether people come to my site and tell me they like my photos or not, I will be here for a long time. I don't plan on going anywhere, and I encourage anyone reading this to not worry about what other people think. Don't do this for them, or rather do anything for what anyone thinks. You are you and you are unique and I love that about you and so do other people.

Do it for you and your love and passion for making art. It means the world to people and the beauty we capture with that little sensor or film will last through the ages and people will look back on what we did and smile because we made magic; we made a moment stop in time and we loved every second or millisecond of it.

This photo was at Dulles International Airport on March 20, 2007. I was leaving for a trip to Africa, which I will never forget. It changed my life in more ways than I can express with words. Keep coming back here, because there will be some stuff done with the photos and stories I have from the trip and I would love to share them with you. Even if that is just you, mom and dad.

I almost forgot to mention that this photo is a part of a series of photos I am working on. I am taking pictures all around that world from my perspective, that is from five feet seven inches above the ground. So, someday I will put all of these photographs together in a collection and there will be a coherent body of work, that will change the world... ok, maybe not, but it will still be something more than just a bunch of random pictures that make up my life. There will be something that goes together. Ok, I am done rambling. If you made it to the end, you deserve a pat on the back. I know I would have given up a long time ago. I'm not patient enough, but such is life.