What’s the point of making photographs and films?

There comes a time in any creators life when they question themselves.

I think I know the answer but then again, I’m not sure?

What do I achieve by making photographs?

Who cares anyway?

The above photograph was made on a whim. I’d always planned to make a picture from these bollards, knowing somebody had drawn a question mark on one. It attracted me because it’s quirky. I grabbed this photograph while walking home from a friends house late at night and while I a little worse for wear.

It’s a powerful picture and one of my favourites (of many)!

I made it because I like the look of it and fits with my quizzical mind. It doesn’t fit with any project and stands alone as a single image. Once I got home and did a little post production on it. I only ever perform digital darkroom techniques and never crop a photograph in post. This is simply because I have been trained to get it right in camera and it’s become a firm belief of mine, that if you have to alter the picture in post, then it’s not good enough anyway and I tend to just move on if I don’t get it right.

WHY THOUGH?

I posted it on social media and possibly got a few likes from people following my social pages but that’s it. That’s where it stopped! What was the point of that? Well, I’ve got a huge library of photographs that tell a story of my journey through life and it gives me a record of the weird things that I notice on my travels. A lot of my photographs also tell parts of other peoples stories and journeys.

I like to think I can second guess peoples stories. Was this man walking home from the pub late at night? I noticed the difficulty in walking up this hill, so I flattened it for him, levelled it out.

I often take my dog for walks at night and with my camera, just looking for things that I find interesting. Usually it’s something different and more often than not, the photographs just pop up on social media and then sit on my hard drive. I always plan to print them and make a book one day (which is sooo expensive)!

So, going back to they why…

I wrote a post about this on social media and it went something like this…

I think this just about sums it up, although you’ll never get to understand how my mind works, I don’t think I’ll ever know, I just know it’s a little bit odd, a bit weird and not quite the same as everyone else.

Let’s just leave it at that shall we?

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