Photography means a lot to me.
It means a lot to a lot of people. There is something about being able to capture a fleeting moment infinitely so easily which people seem to love. It appeals to so many different people, from those who purely want a pictorial notebook, to those who pursue the perfect light and the perfect subject to the ends of the earth, purely to achieve their best work yet.
I lie somewhere inbetween these two ends of the spectrum, roughly where most people who would deem themselves "serious amateurs" reside. We are beyond the flash-nuked, red-eye plagued party shots of the aide memoir snapper, but not willing or able to give as much time to the pursuit of the perfect moment or scene as people such as Cartier-Bresson and Joe Cornish.
I do a lot of still-life work, and also a lot of stuff around a chunk of the Kentish coast where I have a holiday home. It's a pretty innocuous place, but there's always something there which can catch my eye, and what's more, I always take the time out to allow something to catch my eye whilst I'm there. Now my work is hardly the most inspiring or innovative stuff out there, but it brings me some pleasure, and if I wasn't out there taking photos of this place, I doubt many people would.
My photos may be more about artistic merit than they used to be, but there's still an element of preserving a memory in them. And that's something I never want to lose in them. Sure it might mean that I never become seriously good, but at least I'll still be able to enjoy my photos, and that's really their raison d'etre.
I lie somewhere inbetween these two ends of the spectrum, roughly where most people who would deem themselves "serious amateurs" reside. We are beyond the flash-nuked, red-eye plagued party shots of the aide memoir snapper, but not willing or able to give as much time to the pursuit of the perfect moment or scene as people such as Cartier-Bresson and Joe Cornish.
I do a lot of still-life work, and also a lot of stuff around a chunk of the Kentish coast where I have a holiday home. It's a pretty innocuous place, but there's always something there which can catch my eye, and what's more, I always take the time out to allow something to catch my eye whilst I'm there. Now my work is hardly the most inspiring or innovative stuff out there, but it brings me some pleasure, and if I wasn't out there taking photos of this place, I doubt many people would.
My photos may be more about artistic merit than they used to be, but there's still an element of preserving a memory in them. And that's something I never want to lose in them. Sure it might mean that I never become seriously good, but at least I'll still be able to enjoy my photos, and that's really their raison d'etre.
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