I need to be posting more.

I was trying to think of a way I could bring value to my (3? 4?) readers of this blog. Having people come to this site to check out my work was the original goal of this site, but that does not keep people coming back regularly – mostly cause I don’t post new work nearly as often as I would like to (consequences of having a career that’s not centered around photography I guess). I do have a link to a store, but it’s not really about selling images. Collaborations would be great, but I feel like that’s not super likely (that feels more like a social media type of thing).

But with my upcoming workshop tomorrow I had a thought – maybe refocus this into more of a teaching type of blog? I was browsing a couple of my favorite photography blogs tonight https://blog.annemckinnell.com/ and https://adrianeohanesian.com/ and I was thinking about what I found inspirational about them.

I really wanted to pursue a career in photojournalism. When I was looking at colleges I considered three options: photojournalism, pilot, engineer, astronaut. Astronaut was such a long shot, and I get motion sickness, so that was kinda destined to just be a dream (though with privatized spaceflights now…). Pilot – My research at the time showed that it would take years to get to a position with a salary close to what an engineer could start at, and the career growth was projected to be on the decline (a projection that has proven to be untrue). Engineering seemed like the safe choice, with a good salary and solid career options (my dream when I started was to go work in robotics and maybe join the mars rover project). But photojournalism was really what I wanted to do. But I figured that it would be nearly impossible to make a long term living with it. Given the rise of clickbait “journalism” and news hitting social media immediately I think that my guess was correct. Thought with that career there are values beyond just earning a living – that’s a career field that would have had potential to leave a net positive impact on people (not saying engineering does not have that potential, but it’s different). So I look at what Adriane has done in her career and it’s just impressive, not just in her photographic skills but in how she pursues meaningful stories and works to share them with the world.

With Anne, she reinvented her life and walked away from her career. She sold everything, got an RV and a boat, and travels. In her blog she shares stories and pictures from her adventures. That’s something I think about doing almost daily – just pack up and hit the road. Trouble is I’m a not that great of a writer, which if you follow this blog I’m sure you know by now lol. Plus driving traffic to a blog is a skill that I have not even come close to mastering (my highest number of visits this year so far has been 7 – per google analytics). So that’s clearly not a sustainable option at this point.

So if I can’t do photojournalism full time and I can’t hit the road and make a living off my camera then what can I do with this blog? Well I can continue to try and share my learning’s with you, my passion for photography, and if I can find a few projects in the area to document then I’ll call that a win too.

So anyway I need to write more.