I’ve started taking pictures again. I’d put down the camera for a while. There were many reasons for it – but one of them was that I felt I’d lost my way with my photography. I entered a photography contest at the end of 2009 – and it left me feeling dirty. There was so much drama involved with it – rules that changed and rules that were bent by the organizers, a last minute addition of a public voting component, drama in the forums created for the contest. And I didn’t like any of it – but I played the game and asked friends and family to vote for me, participated in the drama-ridden forums, and generally behaved like a good little contestant. And WHY did I do this? Because, even thought it quickly felt dirty and contrived, I wanted to win all of their fabulous prizes. I pushed aside the negativity I was feeling about the whole thing in an effort to win stuff. And this freaking contest was not even about photography! It was about who had the saddest story (or as they stated it – the most “inspirational” story). Entering your photographs was not even required, a video about you and why you deserved a “scholarship” was what was required. God, I’m an idiot. I allowed myself to be a cute little puppet for someone else’s PR machine. Freaking ridiculous.
Since the contest I’ve learned more about the “behind the scenes” stuff and felt even worse about the whole thing. And I read through the company’s website and that made me MAD. They are a company that purport to be about empowering women – and yet what I see from them is that they are infantalizing women. Girls can’t do math apparently (f-stops and ISOs are apparently beyond us), girls need to cry all of the time, girls need a therapist and life coach in order to make any and all decisions, and the only way for a mom to be a photographer is to be a family portraitist. Photojournalism, fine art photography, sports photography, travel photography – hell no. If you’re a mom and you have a camera you too can be a family portrait photographer also – just buy our videos, attend our workshops, and buy stuff from our sponsors. (Not that there’s anything wrong with family photography – I just think it’s odd it’s the only thing that’s pushed by this company and the way they push it.)
Anyway, selling out never feels good, and it caused me to take stock in what kind of photographer and person I want to be. And I want to be true to myself, and my vision. I take pictures of things that move me. And hopefully they move other people also. Pointing my camera at something that doesn’t move me is not an option. There’s all kinds of photography out there and I’m not going to shoot something because someone else tells me it’s what I should be shooting.
So I’ve been slowly picking up my camera again. Will and I went to the botanic gardens this past weekend and I took a lots of photos – the one above is my favorite.
