Like many other photographers I regularly share my images through a social media platform. I also sometimes post them on this website. And that’s fine and good. And because it’s so normalized it feels very safe; while I might get positive comments from other users it’s the not the same as sharing my work where it might be assessed or publicly reviewed by people who are far more experienced by me, and where those considerations might she shared with a very large set of viewers.
Over the past year I’ve tried to push myself out of my comfort zone. I’ve been more active in thinking about street photography and sharing it with a part of the photographic community — the Photowalk Show — and then sometimes having those thoughts shared with Neale James’ other listeners. I submitted a few photos to a competition for the first time. I described for the first time the motivations and philosophy that underlie my street photography to a (friendly) group of strangers while also sharing an associated sequence of my photographs. I’ve had one of my photos highlighted in a roundup by Glass. And so on.
But the scariest thing has been associated with my postcards project. To be clear, actually printing those postcards wasn’t scary at all! But actually sending them to people — with the prospect they would look at a cohesive bit of my work and then offer commentary to potentially hundreds or thousands of people — has been intimidating because it constitutes an exposure of my amateur photography to an otherwise unknown set of publics.
I’m not afraid of publicity or engaging with publics. I’ve been very involved in public life for the past 15 years, and am as comfortable speaking with leaders of government or other senior leaders as I am appearing on television and speaking to tens or hundreds of thousands of people. But the sharing of my photographic hobby is different because it isn’t a domain where I’m a well-credentialed expert: I’m very much a learning amateur when it comes to photography. While I take my hobby very seriously I don’t have the skills or experience that parallel those of a more seasoned or professional photographer.
I recognize that sharing my work, be it with Neale James and his Photowalk Podcast, or with Ted Forbes and his Art of Photography YouTube channel, has been a real step for me. It represents my ever deepening appreciation for the art form and my starting to explore ways of more broadly sharing my work, as well as developing increasing confidence in what I’m making. I’ve got an long way to go in deepening my expertise in making the kinds of photos I want to make but I feel more confident in what I’m doing, today, than I did even a year ago.
Excited Pixels 