moving and shifting

Being back in school for the spring semester means that life is busy. With a more than full course load, I haven't had much time to blog. If you're reading this, thanks for coming back even though I take so long to update!

As with the rest of my life, I feel like my photography is growing and shifting very quickly right now. I'm using my intution more, letting compositions happen rather than trying to manufacture them. It feels very good to trust myself, rather than trying to control each element by thinking it through and planning what to do. I'm learning that often good things happen if I take the risk of trusting my capacity to respond in the moment (again, both in photography, and life in general).

Yet, I'm unsatisfied; part of me is really bored with my usually genre of nature photography. While I can make pictures that are nice to look at, they don't seem to convey the meaning I want to get across. To tell stories, I need more of a human connection (by taking pictures of people) and to work with images that relate to each other in series, each painting another piece of what I am trying to say. This is sounding a lot like photojournalism.

I've realized that my creative process while doing photography has mostly been in response to my environment. While I sometimes seek out environments that I think will be particularly photogenic (just about any natural body of water, for instance), I usually don't plan or envision a particular photograph or kind of photograph beforehand. I use what I've learned about photography to explore my environment and respond to what I see. This is a very individualistic process, and I find it very meditative. But I'm sure I could really benefit from some collaboration with others.

I have plans to try more street photography in the near future, so we'll see where that takes me. (Yea for spring break next week!)