While I had never been here before, this picture feels like a scene from my distant memory. I realized a while back that for me there is something about taking photos in the region where I grew up. And now I see it everywhere. Books about photographers and the pictures they take around their homes, quotes about photographers and the quality of the images taken in the region that is most familar to them.
These are the photos I like best and the ones I take seriously. I have in my head a heirarchy for the different kinds of photos I take. These are at the top with the camera phone photos at the bottom. Unfortunately the pictures that garner the greatest response tend to be towards the bottom. They're nice enough and all, but maybe I need to stop showing those pictures. The prospect of being known for that one picture of the jellyfish is a bit disheartening. Or maybe not. Maybe learning to accept what is meaningful to me may not be to other people, and to still hang on to that meanginfulness regardless is a lesson I am still learning.
It kind of reminds me of that Stevie Wonder song, "But you're the only one to see the changes you take yourself through." I can't really expect other people to understand or see what is meaningful to me and why. Photography is really, really subjective. I was always aware of that subjectivity in art school, and as a designer for clients, and I've discovered the subjective view of the audience seems to be even stronger in photography. People tend to respond very personally and viscerally to pictures in a way that I have never seen to a painting. One of the reasons I have continued to write here alongside the photos, even after this became a photoblog, is that it is one of the ways I work out what appeals to me and why within the context of my day-to-day. Why I chose to post a specific picture on a specific day is as meaningful to me as why I chose to take the photo in the first place. I think about why I take pictures in general and why I take specific photos regularly. It's as important to me in understanding myself as it is in evolving as a picture taker.
Sometimes I think that's all any kind of art or expression is anyways: thinking out loud in various mediums. With edits.