It’s interesting to me that the images I do every day to exercise my eyes are not at all like the photographs I do to make a living.
My for-fun work is kind of hard to define, but it tends to be about light or composition, sometimes about the striking beauty of color or the amazing impact of black and white. Humans are rarely the subject-matter of my personal work. Last weekend as Leah and I headed off for a hike, I photographed our neighbors’ horse, grazing in a pasture. I liked the shapes I saw, and the color (if Crayola offered a crayon the color of that pasture grass, they’d call it Pacific Northwest Green.) The scene was peaceful. The horse photo is fairly typical of the visual note-taking I do every day.
Saturday will be a work day. I will photograph a wedding, and my focus will be all about people. I will be looking for photographic “moments” that are telling, and, years from now, will be a worthy chronicle of a very emotional and important day in the lives of the people who have hired me. I will be a visual storyteller, shooting largely the way I did in the 25 years I worked for newspapers, with a few posed group photos thrown-in to complete the coverage.
I had no intention, no career plan to be a wedding photographer. It is work that just kind of fell into my life. As I envisioned a transition away from newspaper photojournalism, I promised myself never to let photography feel like a “job.”
I’m kind of like a downhill ski racer whose summertime training is mountain biking. I have two sports, and each keeps me excited about the other.
