We all start somewhere. Whether it is the Fisher Price View-Master or borrowing someone’s camera, photographs and photography captures our imagination. We want to learn to create those stunning images we love. We long to catalog our own experiences. Not only do we want proof we were there, but we want to share how we saw it. Before long, we discover the gap between what we can do today and what we wish to achieve.
Photography has always fascinated me, but I really didn’t get started until college. Borrowing my father’s Pentax, I set out to become the next…whoever. I knew a few of the big names in the field, but I really just wanted to take photos. After shooting several rolls and an incident that cost me a roll of film, I walked away for a time. The money I was spending on film and development was not helping my bank account. The time I wanted to spend shooting wasn’t helping my study time.
Another five or six years went by before I picked up my first digital. A simple point-and-shoot, I enjoyed it, but life kept me largely hemmed in to a routine. It wasn’t until 2004 that I rediscovered just how liberating it was to be able to create my own art.
But was it art? Or just pretty pictures?
For the last fifteen years, I have been on a steady path to a gap. Actually, it has been multiple gaps. No matter how good my last shot, it is never good enough. I can set goals, achieve them, and never feel fully confident that I deserve the title of “professional“.
In my chosen creative forms, I know I can get the shot. My clients will smile and love the results. I will look at the images and think of what could have been. This is a gap I will never successfully jump across.
And that is okay with me.
