Photography is a talent we all have, so why hide your talent? If you are a photographer be that a pro or somebody who does it for fun, photography is a talent so why hide your talent? We all start out with good intensions do we not, you buy a camera and maybe a zoom lens, read a few books on the subject and maybe join your local Camera Club. Slowly or if you are really talented quicker, you get better and better at this photography lark and take more and more photographs. In this digital age there are few limits other than battery life and memory card size to how many you can take and the bonus is make a mistake or don’t like them you can delete them.
In the 21st Century there is no taking your rolls of film to be developed or maybe developing your own black and whites or for the “real” enthusiast colour in you darkroom. Those were the days and for some they still are. In this century we now have another kind of darkroom but this type is not dark it is digital and on your PC, laptop, tablet or even on your Smartphone. I am for my own sake not going to go into Photo Software at the moment as I do suffer from high blood pressure so I will leave that for another time.
The million dollar question is what do you do with all the digital photographs once you have taken them? Who will see them, will anybody ever see them, or will they be stored on a hard drive somewhere for ever never to see the light of a viewing screen ever again? Condemned to the digital dustbin like so much spam mail or forgotten like yesterdays pizza or the shoes that you will never wear again? Sorry to say that is what happens more times than not, which is a great shame as you have spent all that money taken the shots played with them in the editing software you are pleased with them and now you are going to forget about them. Why hide your talent?
I am old enough to remember visiting friends with my wife and being subjected to dozens of slides of resent holidays to Spain or Disneyland, bored stupid as our friend ranted on about the benefits of this lens or his new camera, and hoping the ground would open up and swallow me whole, while at the same time trying desperately not to comment or worse still ask a question.
So why don’t we, and I count myself among this number, do something with at least some of the photographs we take, maybe it is laziness or lack of imagination or perhaps we just cannot be bothered? In reality printers are not expensive nor are photo frames or photo paper in the 21st century, whatever the size be that A4, 3 or A2 none are that costly anymore. I made a promise to myself that I’d not put anything I didn’t take myself onto my wall. It didn’t work out quite like that as I have been married more than four decades so I do need approval from my sternest critic. Plus I find new photographers almost weekly whose work I admire. However; with frames including mounts easy to buy for very little why not get into the habit of changing photographs every couple of months. Larger printers are not that more expensive that smaller versions. Nor is the paper for them be that A4 or A3, gloss matt or plane. The thing is if you change your mind or redecorate the room it is cheap enough to print something you do like.
Photography is a talent we all have, so why hide your talent?