Jennifer L | Blue Wave Studio

Since a few friends have asked me about getting into photography and I’ve noticed more and more people carrying DSLRs now and posting their photos on Facebook, I thought that it might be a good assumption that the general public has become more interested in photography. I had only been through a semester long photography course, so I wanted to explore a photography workshop not only in what they teach, but how they teach it to potentially incorporate it into our services in my day job. So last August, I found a workshop on making Images with Impact by Marc Silber (who studied at the SF Art Institute around the same time as Annie Leibovitz). Images with Impact seemed like a fitting topic with other academic applications such as copyright and presentations.

We talked about the presentation of photographs and how online sites like Flickr aren’t exactly the best way to share photos not only because of uncalibrated monitors and different lighting, but because the commenters don’t necessarily provide constructive feedback, the kind of critique that would help photographers grow.

We also discussed the type of photographs that we normally take and then Marc challenged us to shoot the kind of photos we don’t normally take. For me it would have been photographs of people. To be honest, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to that. When we went out on the street, however, there weren’t too many people, so I worked on textures and shapes instead with my mind on Ansel Adams’ notion of pre-visualization (or visualization as he later called it).

Some of the shots I took:

When we talked about pre-visualization, I was also reminded of pre-visualizing a photo I took with my point and shoot camera in St. Peter’s Cathedral in Vatican City, Italy back in 2003:

So with the photography workshop… I didn’t exactly anticipate being reminded of my love of photography, but that’s what it did. And coincidentally, shortly after the workshop, I saw a post by Chase Jarvis on For The Love of Photography, that summed it up for me:

But where is your love of pictures? Where are your actions that back this up?
Can you pick up a book of photographs and get lost in it?
Can you walk around with your iPhone or Android or your point and shoot or whatever and take 100 pictures knowing that they’ll never be for a client or a portfolio?
Do you love hunting for pictures?
Will you stay up late or get up early for pictures?
Do you sometimes ‘see’ life as a photograph?

I thought about it and thought, oh yes, I have stayed up late or gotten up early for pictures! And then I remembered this photo:

My friends and I were visiting the Kyoto Imperial Palace in 2006. It had starting raining (maybe it was even hailing). I was trying to take a picture and when it started pouring, my friends took cover under some trees with their umbrellas, I stayed put, with my camera in my hands and holding my umbrella awkwardly with my neck with both my hands super crazy freezing just so that I could take the photo. Although now I think it’s just an OK photo, I didn’t want to regret not taking the photo and I’m glad I don’t.

Reading Chase Jarvis’ post, I felt relieved. That it was okay that I’ve taken photos that I haven’t shared. And that I have hundreds of personal photo albums I haven’t processed or posted. And despite that, I still keep making photographs and keep shooting, and now even the kind of photos I don’t usually take, expanding my skill and experience as each provides different sets of challenges.

And as I mentioned in a previous post, I hope to be posting more frequently now that I’ve figured out a workflow so you’ll probably see some photos “From The Files”.

To see a slideshow of my photos from Japan or Europe from the files, please visit my Japan and Europe albums.

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