Photographer’s Journey (1 of 3)

I was thinking of some deep philosophical explanation on the nature of creativity.  Something that would provoke some wide discussion and promote self-realization for anyone reading my first blog post but I realized that’s just not my style.  Of course that could change… it’s likely I’ll have another post on creativity but the deep part is likely to be left out… LOL!

I wanted to talk a little about my photography and what drew me back into this profession that I love so much.  In one simple term you can thank some of my friends, my wife and most specifically son Jared…

Ain’t he cute!  He get’s that from his mother  😉   Kissing up aside though he really is the reason I picked back up the camera.  As an explanation, I have alway been interested in photography as a child (another story for another post) but I never really looked seriously at Professional Photography as something I could do for my “job.”  It was something I loved to do for fun but it wasn’t a career in my head.  So why didn’t I just give it a shot you ask?  Well life happened, followed a girl from high school to college and I ended up pursuing a degree in Physics and Computer Science all the while taking art/photography classes for fun.

I graduated and thought of myself proudly as a very big geek (I still am) but still not a photographer.  I was always playing with the latest and greatest toys and that included the advent of digital cameras and scanners.  Fast forward a bit and you see me meeting my beautiful wife (no not the same girl I followed to college) and she taking pity on me and my dorkiness thus leading to a date and eventually marriage.  Of course for our wedding I knew the value of photography (although I couldn’t apply it to myself from a career point of view) so we budgeted the largest amount for photography.  We know we had to capture the day and we were on a tight budget but while flowers will fade my wedding album doesn’t.  Luckily a very talented photographer had moved into the area and we were just amazed with her photography.  I didn’t think we could afford such wonderful work.  Fortunately she was newer to the scene at that time and wasn’t already booked for the day.  The photos were inspiring and I go back to my wedding portraits and album still to this date.  It’s funny although she was new and small back then… she has only grown into a photography powerhouse since, still never ceasing to inspire though.  I think that is still a story for another blog post… let’s just say, thank you Lori Nordstrom!

My exposure to Lori’s photography got me dusting off my camera, re-looking at my photography and how I could get some of those same type of amazing shots.  So thus began the epic path that every photographer starts early on of upgrading their toys thinking it will upgrade their photography.  I’ll save any potential photographers reading this some time, money and heartache…. it’s the photographer and not the camera…. upgrade your mind, not your toys.

So how does all this tie into Jared you ask?  Well, that is something I will going into in the next part of this series.  As a teaser though, let me ask you one question… if you go to all the little retail photo stores in town and walk out with nice pictures but they all look the same then how many will you want to put up on your wall?  I’ll tell you my answer in the next posting.

Until then enjoy this image from my kids “rockstar brothers” shoot that Jared did the editing on (don’t worry he’s only in training and only gets to help edit our own family images… LOL).

– Brian