Bill Jay has an amazing talent for describing my daydreams. While reading this article I realized that this is part of my artistic process and i also realized that i should develop this process more. When I begin photographing or lack any sort of idea of what to photograph, I usually walk or drive around and daydream to generate ideas. This is helpful in finding things that interest me but the real ideas dont come through until I actually begin to take Photographs. Normally once I begin photographing the creative ideas of what to do with the photographs come like a flood and is hard to decipher goos ideas from bad.
The part pf the article that really interested me is when the author spoke of exploration versus exploitation and that is is important to have enough interest in something to become knowledgable on the subject. My first photo course I wanted to photograph the homeless around downtown and I did but the results bothered me because they felt exploitive and I could not figure out why. Weeks later I came across an artist who did photograph the homeless in black and white and for some reason beyond skill and experience his photographs found merit. I was so intrigued by his work that i went to interview him and see why he choose these subjects and what he did differently. I turns out he actually knew many of the homeless from growing up in the same neighborhood and offered them food and clothing in exchange for the photographs. It never came down to the process of the photography itself, although that added to his personal portrait style that he had ended up with, it came down to the knowledge he had of the vagrant he photographed.
This article had epiphany all over it for me.
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