6661 of ∞
I’ve written before about what I want to do with photography in the future and why photography is such a powerful medium. I’ve posted videos from the TED Conference featuring James Nachtwey, my photography hero, speaking about what photography means to him. I haven’t written much about why I pick up the camera when I go out. What keeps me hitting the shutter release frame after frame. I have now taken 6662 shots with my 30D. I have shot on three different continents and taken photos of everything from black and white still life’s of my bathroom to orphan children playing soccer in Uganda. And I am still amazed at what happens when I plug the CF card into my card reader. Seeing images that I saw with my eyes, places and people, moments lost to time, replicated on screen as a computer’s interpreting of the 0′s and 1′s from the light sensor in the camera, it amazes me. They are windows into things I can never experience again.
The night before leaving for Uganda I wrote in my journal, “In just over 24 hours I’m going to get on a plane and it is going to change my life forever. …I think that this is going to be a very important moment in my life that I will look back on one day and say that is when things changed. What that change might be, I don’t know. I believe that God has time and again made it abundantly clear that I’m supposed to go and see and take pictures. I would hope this trip makes me less cynical and more galvanized for change.” That was just barely less than a year ago.
It is very popular on Flickr to do a “365″ series consisting of a photo of yourself everyday for one year. I have a lot of respect for people who are able to do it and some of them end up with amazing work. I don’t think I could do it though. That’s not the kind of photography that excites me. I don’t feel driven to take photos because of the “bokeh” of my new lens or the cool way I can light a scene with my iPhone and an alarm clock. All that stuff is cool and fun to play around with, but it’s not what I do.
Volume-wise, the vast majority of the photos I take are of bands performing at the Abbey Coffee and Music Lounge here in Santa Cruz. I enjoy it and I’ve taken good pictures there. But my best work, the work I think was most rewarding and has the most meaning is the photos I brought back from Africa. I believe that great art, truly monumental works that have lasting cultural impact, has a cost. I have a lot to learn and a lot of photos to take in my future so I have no delusions of greatness with anything I have done up to this point. But when I look at the photos I have from Uganda and compare them to those photos I have from the Abbey, it’s not even close. I shoot at Vintage and the Abbey because I can and it is a great service to the church. But the photography I am most passionate about, the work that gets me most fired up and wanting to share with others is stuff like I got from Uganda. Those are photos God borrowed my camera for. I partly went to Uganda because I wanted go on an exotic adventure and I wanted people to look at my photos and be jealous of my experience. But the photos I brought back were not about me. Not about my skilled manipulation of ISO’s and f-stops. The photos I brought back show a world that is completely alien to us in America. A world where war, famine, and disease are a reality and yet hope lives on.
I get upset sometimes when my flickr sets don’t get the views I think they deserve or when I see a “pro” doing work I could do better. I get upset that people haven’t “discovered” me and aren’t showering me with comments and page views. But then I remember why I’m really doing this. God did not gift me as a photographer so that I could be famous. God gifted me so that I could tell stories. So that I could help confront injustice and suffering, pain and ignorance. So that maybe someday a kid sees one of my photos and is moved to do something for AIDs orphans or the homeless or maybe even just the lonely. I don’t want people to see my photos and think, “that’s great lighting.” I want them to see my photos and say, “what am I doing to make a difference,” or “it really is beautiful when the Body of Christ worships the Creator.”
As I look toward a future of international relief work and continuing with my photography to that end, I can’t help but think if I try to do it for my own glory I won’t be able to last. I know stories of photojournalists who have worked in war zones or the third world and end up killing themselves because they can’t cope with the reality of people living in those conditions. When I remember I am not taking these photos for my self, but because there is a story that needs to be told and seen, that is what will keep me going. That’s why I shoot. Why I strive to be the best I can be, to be a good steward of this gift I have been given. No one has ever changed the world with a new bigger TV or a new faster car, but photographers who believe in the importance of telling the truth, of being true to the world they see through their lens and the people who live in it, they have.
