I had the first session with new tutor Dave Gee today. He is covering lightroom, aperture and moving images. Being the first day he asked the group where our interest lay in terms of photography and what career path we were focusing on. I answered the question with a sentence that has almost become a template for me when asked this question. Without even thinking I answered "commercial and advertising". This answer and idea is based upon an article I read in a photo magazine about 3-4 years ago. The fact that this one article affected my focus so much is bizarre, maybe part of the reason for this was having people assume all photographers do is weddings (no offence meant to wedding photographers, some wedding photography I've seen is stunning and truly creative).
This repetitive opinion expressed in conversation as a vehicle for small talk in social situations starts to grate after the 100th time of hearing "What, like weddings and stuff?" Back on point though, I have developed a certain taste for music and documentary photography over the past year and have researched these styles much more intensely than commercial or advertising photography.
So what the hell am I doing? Surely I should be spending my time finding out what sells in the commercial world and how the advertising world works, but I'm not and it doesn't fill me with fear that I might miss out on my 'dream' job. Could it be that I have created this job role as just an answer to a question I think I should know? Probably, the truth is that what scares me most is a lack of direction in my work. I need to shake off my automatic answering machine style answer I always give in response to the illusive question "What photography do you want to do?" and search for what I love doing. If this leads me back to my original answer at least this time I will know why.
