How to Give Up Before you Even Start

Found Abstract #5
Originally uploaded by The Other Pete

I was chatting with a friend last night who had seen some of my recent photographic efforts and she said "y'know, your pictures are really pissing me off." Naturally, I was a little confused.

She went on to say that if she had a car, she'd be able to take pictures as good as the ones I was showing her. At the time, I pretty much shrugged it off and the conversation went on. I guess I was still thinking about it, though, because this morning it made me realize something about my own photography: I simply won't go out of my way to do it.

Every weekend, I make plans to go someplace for the sake of taking pictures and every weekend, something stops me. I used to feel like a useless sack because of it, telling myself that if I was a real artist, I'd be cruising all over the countryside, camera in hand, recording life in all its myriad detail and beauty. But the truth is that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm just confining it to my life alone.

The pictures that I take don't involve my going out much out of my way. When I'm out and about, I bring my camera and take photos of anything that interests me (like the one above, for example). There's always something interesting out there that's worthy of a photograph. I just set my mind to finding it.

Which brings me back to my friend's complaint. In deciding that she needs a car to take photos, she has already decided that there's nothing remotely worthy of photographing anywhere around her. That strikes me as especially sad, in that, not only is she miserable for not producing art, she's already judged her life as not worthy of being art and is miserable as a result of that, too. I suspect that if she could just bring herself to take the camera out in her back yard, she would find an endless array of things to strike her fancy. Perhaps they won't be the usual things she's used to photographing, but that won't matter. After all, hardly any of the 300 pictures I've taken in the last month reflect my typical sensibilities. But at least I can't say that I've taken 300 picutres this month and some of them don't even suck.

Oh well. I'm sure she'll come around eventually.