Loose Leaf Notes

Confucius believed that all wisdom came from learning to call things by the right name. I’m all for naming who you are and what it is you do. That’s part of making it come true.  ~ Colleen Redman

I bought my first camera in Jackson Square, Weymouth, Massachusetts, when I was 18 years old.  Before that it was Polaroids and those black and white strips from the photo booth at Paragon, our town’s amusement park.   I don’t remember the camera brand or how much it cost.  It wasn’t very good, but I loved it from the moment I started snapping and was only sorry that I hadn’t gotten one sooner instead of spending all my babysitting money on clothes.

Back then people didn’t have cameras to the extent they do today. My parents must have had one because we have family pictures, mostly of holiday scenes, but taking pictures was the exception rather than the rule.

When I was a girl I saw the world through my own young eyes.  After my sons were born, I saw it anew through their eyes.  At that time I was taking pictures and filling stacks of photo albums to document my life.  It’s only been in the last handful of years that I’ve begun to look at my photography as artistic expression.

My older brother Jim was an aspiring photographer who had some of his weather shots published.  He also took odd pictures of the ragged, the broken, and the quirky.  I used to laugh and tell him that I only liked pictures with people in them.  But after he died, I saw the world bigger and new again through his (non-physical) eyes.

Today, after 40 years of taking pictures, my eye is like an extension of my camera lens.  I’m always ready to stop and capture a scene that inspires me, like I’m always ready to take notes when my writer’s muse speaks.  I don’t even like to walk to the mailbox without my camera.  It’s always at hand. I dream of it.  I still document, but I also like to play, with light, colors, and angles.  I’m fascinated by the poetry of doorways, stairs, and fences.  When driving I pull over for old barns.

I have the love for photography and the eye for composition but lack technical skill and the upscale equipment  (which would be wasted on me since I can’t even remember the basic settings on my point and shoot) that being a serious professional photographer takes.  And yet, because I write and take pictures for pay for our local newspaper, I don’t quite fit amateur status either, which I had to think about recently when I wanted to enter a local photography contest for non-professionals.

About five year ago I wrote an essay titled “Who is a writer?”  My definition of a writer is a person who is compelled to write, and if there is no payment involved, it only further confirms that they are one. A person who will work for days to find the just right word and the right order of every written line without the incentive of compensation is either a writer or not completely sane. When I say “I’m a writer,” I’m not necessarily claiming to be a “good writer.” I am saying that writing is what I’m interested in and what I do, more than anything else.

It turns out that thinking of myself as “a photographer” is an even bigger leap, even though I spend nearly as much time at it as do with writing.   After all these years of taking pictures by trial and error and with minor successes, and in today’s world where everyone has a camera, I’m asking the question that I have no easy answer to:  who is a photographer?