Who do you photograph for?

I have been returning to this question over and over lately. Pondering why I photograph. Who I photograph for? In particular I am interested where my best work comes from.

To keep saying over and over that I do my best work for myself seems to ring truest. When I start to consider my audience my work faulters. No better illustration is when I opened the gallery at Katoomba and once I worked out what was selling in the gallery any attempt to make more that was similar failed miserably.

Yet, why does my work improve so dramatically lately? Or is it even? It feels like it does. But I am honestly the worst judge of my own work.

I have been thinking it’s because I have been worrying less and less about trying hard. Less thoughts of what others will think. More confidence to do as I please to please myself. Confidence. Confidence.

This tells us that it’s so much a Head game doesn’t it. We shape our work with our thoughts, actions and beliefs.

For me, it’s when I focus on pleasing my own creative desires and projections that performance is highest.

This photograph for example, I can’t remember taking it, nor where it was taken. Of course I can look it up to trigger my memory. But really that doesn’t matter. It’s the ones like these that were inconsequential at the time of taking that shine so brightly for me.

You see, it’s because I wasn’t trying so hard to be something or make something special. I was off in my own world enjoying the playing and creating for purely personal reasons that was and always is so special. It’s moments like these that I live for.

It’s when I am being truely me, Len, Leonard, the creative artist just playing with child like enthusiasm and fearless without the thought of consequences that I blossom.

I photograph best for me. Your enjoyment is purely consequential. Yet, it’s perceived worth to you keeps me going somewhere in all of this.

Perhaps I should reframe it as letting go.

Being present in the moment. In your body and in a sense of place.

Art teaches you to be you. To be present and connected.

My advice to you is to create art for you, to be present and connected. To let go. To relax. Breathe.

A busy week ahead for me, camera club presentations all week to Melbourne clubs and readying for next weeks abstract week. It’s still not to late to book.

The last ISO Escape for the year is now free for a booking. If you would like to tell me where you’d like me to take you and perhaps a friend for a fully inclusive week in NSW so I can teach you, inspire you, centre you and get you out creating. 16-20 November 2020. An amazing opportunity. Very small groups to remain Covid safe.

http://lensschool.com for more information and to book.

A couple of trees somewhere. Photograph and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2020