Finding Vision…

…David duChemin is a humanitarian photographer out of Vancouver, BC, and has done a lot of work for World Vision. His photography is, from my perspective, poetry. David spends a lot of time talking about vision, and it’s precisely that point of view that encouraged me to pick up one of his books Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision. Most photography books are highly technical, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m enrolled in a technical program, and I have at least two other books on the technical aspects of photography.  However, to be a photographer, there is something just a step beyond the technical that makes a picture magical.  For David, that epiphanal aspect is vision.

So why did I subtitle my blog “Finding vision through the craft of photography”? This is the question I was asking myself this morning.  I know that’s silly, shouldn’t I have thought that out before putting pen to paper (so to speak)?  Well, yes and no…I believe we’re motivated by the subconscious, so even when we don’t fully understand our actions, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re thoughtless. So, as I set up the blog, I kept looking at that sentence and tried to find another way to say it, but couldn’t find anything that held on to the emotion I needed to convey, so I went with it. This morning my inner voice was nagging me again, “Shouldn’t a photographer communicate vision with photography? And by doing so doesn’t that imply that they already have the vision? And if they already have the vision, why would they find it while communicating it?”. Well, today, I told my inner voice to stop being so damn literal! 

It’s true that vision is essential to photographs. After all what I need to show you should have some meaning behind it, otherwise why waste your time on it? Perhaps a photographer should have vision all sown up prior to shooting, but as I look at a collection of pictures I took while at the 2009 Lavender Festival in Sequim (pronounced Sqwim) Washington, I remember “finding” my vision that day. I remember going from farm to farm, and discovering the joy I had in selective focus pictures, and how to this day, those are still my favorite shots.  Perhaps one day, when I’m an all-grown-up-photographer, I will have vision in the bag, but for now, I’m a student.  And, truthfully, I hope I never stop learning from shot to shot, because for each picture I take, I’m not just revealing to you something of the world around me, I’m revealing a little bit of myself, as well.

Taken at the Lavender Festival in Sequim, Washington July 2009