Learning to write

I’ve been toiling with the idea of writing again for the past couple of weeks now. I used to write regularly for a year straight a couple of years ago, until I didn’t. With all the time at home lately and the pursuit of finding my artistic self in photography; I’ve been consuming a lot of blogs again and it’s sparked an interest in writing. However, just as in my photography, I’ve been struggling with deciding on what to write about. For a while, I thought my blog would just be photo inspired stories, since it is a photography website, but I didn’t like the way I was writing. That could be very much just my perception, but it wasn’t feeling right.

So I started to look deeper. I started to ask myself questions. Questions, like, why do I enjoy reading certain articles versus others? What topics can I speak about in depth? What sparks ideas? All sorts of questions went through my head. I also asked myself honest questions, am I a writer? Why do I want to write? With no prevail, I didn’t have any answers in myself. I did remember reading an article on how to better your writing on Medium and one article mentioned to just write. Dump your thoughts out. Which I learned is a common practice among those who write. So here I am, I started with a sentence and now I’m two paragraphs in.

I mentioned earlier that I’ve been trying to find the artist in myself with my photography. Trying to develop my style, as they say. For the longest time I always pushed back against the idea of only shooting one way, or editing in a specific way. I’ve stood on the point of I edit how I feel. I edit on how I feel the image should look, and that in itself is my style. A lot of well known photographers in the social media world all elude to the fact that your instagram feed needs to be uniquely you. That all the images are distinct within. When I looked at my feed, it was all over the place. This probably seems ridiculous to the average person, but for me it was a constant argument in my head. Do I try to hone in my “look” or do I just do me. The obvious answer is to just do me, but I still wanted to see if I had a particular style in shooting or in editing. With photographing and shooting an image, I definitely have my perspective in how to portray an image in my head, but with editing, I did learn that the reason I wasn’t being “artistic” was because I am not well versed with the tools I’m using. Probably more versed than others, but certainly not versed enough.

So there it was. The opportunity. I needed to push myself and try things. I needed to be okay if the image turned out like shit. I needed to be okay with pressing the “reset” button. I needed to be patient with myself if I wasn’t getting the image I saw in my head replicated on the screen. I needed to be okay. I pushed myself to be better. Do better. I told myself, if I was a real photographer, then I can make any image look good. I can make any image tell a story. So one morning, I took my camera into the kitchen with me while I made breakfast and coffee and I shot the mundane. But I pushed myself to frame a certain way, play with the light in the kitchen, then, then I pushed myself in the editing process. I asked myself what do I want people to feel from these images and there it was. I created something from nothing. Something that I was genuinely happy with.

After I uploaded the images to dropbox and downloaded them to my phone, and put white borders around them; I uploaded them as a set onto Instagram…and I waited. I waited for the photographers and artists to comment on how much they loved my work. How beautiful my images were. But nothing…a mere 10 likes the whole day, and one of them was from my sister (which I genuinely appreciated because she understood it). But it didn’t garnish the attention I wanted. Then I remembered something from Gary Vaynerchuck. “who gives a fuck about likes” “you’re insecure” “who fucking cares if no one likes it or if it’s not aesthetically pleasing” “stop treating your instagram like a fucking gallery.” But…but, I’m a photographer, my instagram is my gallery! No! My instagram is a way for people to see my work. It’s a way for me to share my images. I should post not for the likes, but because it makes me happy.

Then I realized something. The 800+ followers I have, are mostly friends and acquaintances, not actual photographers or artists alike. That part definitely plays into the equation. I also found it interesting how my other instagrams, devoted to one specific thing, grew so fast! Not like thousands, but in a week I would get 100 followers. I realized then that it was because I was following the community. With all that, I also started to realize, I lost a part of myself. The part that is artistic. Where did I lose it, or what did I lose it to? I lost it to conforming. Conforming to what people might like. Conforming to what my day should look like. Conforming to societal beliefs.

So, where’s the end to all of this? Who knows. What I do know, is that I just wrote something. I do know that I’ve re-discovered myself. I do know, that all of this will come and go as with everything. Lastly, what I do know, is that when the feeling is there, you go after it and you don’t stop until your finished.