When I was growing up --the son of two music teachers -- and played trumpet in the high school band, sitting alone in my room and playing scales and exercises (which my private teacher expected me to do) felt like torture. Yes, I wanted to play as well as the members of “Blood, Sweat and Tears,” but, as I listened to the group's records again and again and often even played along with them, I wondered: “When those guys were kids, did they have to practice scales?”
Practicing my trumpet felt SO B-O-R-I-N-G!
It was also while I was in high school, however, that I discovered photography, and, in the 40 years now that I have considered photography both my profession and my art, the search for images has rarely failed to provide some kind of rush.
Every day I look for pictures, and it’s a hugely enjoyable game I play to see if I can find photographs in the most common, mundane places. Even on days when I’m not shooting professionally for a client, I’m looking-looking-looking, exercising my eyes and working to stretch the way I see. Often my subject matter is one of our critters, or something else that is right in front of me all the time, and that offers a visual challenge by virtue of its everyday-ness.
Funny how, once I found my passion, practicing was no longer a matter of blood, sweat and tears.
