Quick chat before the weekend.....

I am happy to hear my sister arrived back in NY, but I do miss having chats with her in person, albeit there are times when I think she has escaped from the looney bin - she knows what I am referring to and I know she will be laughing!

Today, I want to share a little about what has been going on in my head. It isn't a huge amount in the grand scale of things, but it has been enough to make me stop and think and it all started with:-

Being lucky enough to have had all 3 of the photographs I submitted into a juried exhibition called Puppy Love accepted -yay! These are due to go on exhibition later this month which I will write about nearer the time.  I have just had the images framed and are all waiting to be shipped tomorrow to the USA, and going through all of this has reinforced to me how doing any of this has to because of your own personal love of photography.

Capturing something "special" has to be the thing that drives you to taking the pictures you do, and not the pounds, shillings and pence, or indeed the cents, quarters or dollars! You take the pictures because they make you happy, the images say something to you, and if you are very lucky, they will do that for others. Doing this reinforced this and I am grateful for that as we all need our heads pecked to make us think clearly.

I have to remember that I send my images knowing that they were liked enough to be selected and that should be validation enough. I also have to remember that in going on exhibition they may indeed not be liked enough by anyone so may not sell and I will have incurred costs. People don't all like what you do, plain and simple, but if that is the reason for you doing something then you might never hear your own voice/calling.

Money, I can say hand on heart was not the reason I sent the images, and that is something that remembering and focusing on will hopefully pull me through any disappointment, should nobody like them enough to put their hand in their pocket to shell out hard earned cash. The economy is tough. I would however also indeed be lying if I didn't say the thought of it didn't creep in once I was selected, but working through the commerciality and logistical aspects of it I am so glad that I got that parrot using his beak to knock on my head to remind me that was not what this entry was all about so if I come out of it out of pocket, I am still coming out of it big in heart.

Doing this has been a great learning opportunity, but more so it has been a hugely flattering honour this is a juried selection, and the 3 images I put forward all got selected.  Not only have I got the chance to say I have been selected in a group exhibition like this, but also I get to test the water, ok, I might get very wet from having fallen flat on my face, but what I have done is put something out with 100% effort and I chose the images because I thought they might have a more mass appeal but I also realise that might not turn out to be the case so hay ho! I now feel better for sharing that and putting it in writing reinforces this for me anyhow :-)

The above all comes at a time when it was announced that Eve Arnold died yesterday at the age of 99.  She was a lady who to me came across as caring, beautiful and charming and a big deal Magnum photographer, who spent 10 years photographing Marilyn Monroe as well as other very famous (and not so famous) people.  I have a picture of her which was taken by David Eustace a Glasgow born photographer which I luckily got at a charity auction many years ago.  It is a beautiful image, and because she is someone whose work I have admired I spent yesterday evening listening to some of the interviews that were made about her.  Eve, like many of the other master photographers had a passion for capturing something special and telling a story through those images. Doing that over and over again is not an easy thing when you have to work hard at it, but if you have fun doing it, and find that is something so completely natural and integral to you in wanting to share/tell a story, then perhaps it might be because you are doing it first and foremost because it is so part of you, and without that integrity you cannot do it like the masters, not that I am in anyway a master, but you have to have dreams to escape to and photography does that for me.

Reading a good book, watching a fantastic movie, looking at a great picture or painting that speaks to you and transports you somewhere else and just makes you feel something is a magical thing and I am so grateful that we have this out there in the world to embrace in whatever form it manifests itself to us.

Just a quick chat before the weekend!!!