If you’re serious about photography, at some point the question will need to be addressed: should you become a professional?
Why Not Become a Photo Pro?
Sunday quiet (Oslo Travel Log #2)
It’s Sunday. It’s still rainy in Oslo. It really feels like I travelled from summer to November in a day.
Room 329 (Oslo Travel Log #1)
Toot! Toot! I’m traveling to Oslo this week.
Waiting in square mode
You’re at the doctor’s for a scheduled appointment. It’s heaving. Even more than usual. Apparently, the temporary secretary doesn’t know how to manage bookings and she books too many people at once. So what do you do? You take photos at the surgery of course!
What Monochrome Taught Me
Switching to monochrome has changed how I see photography from the conceptual viewpoint, but also from the process viewpoint.
Is Photography a Social Contract?
To me, photography, isn’t just a medium for artistic expression or documentation. It creates an implicit social contract between the photographer, the subject, and the eventual viewer. That contract involves layers of trust, interpretation, and cultural negotiation that exist whenever an image is captured and shared. The social contract of photography shapes not just the image itself but the way it is interpreted across different social and cultural contexts.
More Fishing Huts
Further on the last photo, here is one of the photos I took during the day in bright sunlight.
How Not Being Relevant Is Now An Advantage
I never followed trends. Still don’t. The branded trainers, the tribal colours, the group signalling that consumed my schoolmates meant nothing to me (still doesn’t, I don’t wear brands). While they sorted themselves into neat categories of belonging, I couldn’t be bothered allocating brain resources to such nonsense. I cared that my parents bought me shoes, not which logo was on them. I wanted one decent friend to talk with, not membership in whatever faction was fashionable that term.
Fishing Huts
This is a return to my roots: a landscape with sunset colours. This is the sort of photos I was taking 20 ago.
Become a Good Photographer, Step Four: Force the Habit
It’s easy to fall into the comfortable position of not taking photos, even if you want to. Taking photographs requires switching into the right frame of mind, if you’re into landscapes or street photography it requires you to go out, sometimes travelling, and then there’s processing whether you take digital or film. It’s just easier to watch TV or doom scroll.
