I was driving the other day thinking about artists and their work. Artists are blessed or burdened, depending on how they look at it, with passionately feeling everything. Not only passionately feeling but passionately seeing everything about life. I'm starting to realize that I own some of those characteristics. I'm deeply affected by the simplest things. I can be overly passionate about a feeling and I'm easily transfixed by things most people pay no attention to. The other night in a caffeine induced insomnia, I started connecting the dots. In college I had a period where I painted emotive paintings with deep meaning to me. I lived and breathed inspiration that mused me to create more deeply and I made some of my favorite work during that time.
I don't necessarily see myself as an artist. I think I'll continue to strive for that. But I am starting to realize that my need to create is inherent. I'm starting to realize that my work is synced with my mood. With photography, I'm able to continually feel and see, so passionately, the romance and elusiveness of human connection and love and I try to make art out of it. I've come to see that I'm more an introvert, exhausted by crowds and happier in my own head. And I've come to realize that telling stories is my form of art. Our adventures, our photographs, our view and how we document love is our art.
If you asked me three years ago about my work, I would have said it was for our clients and for the purpose of savoring a moment. And all that is true. But now, it's for me too. It's for what I'm passionate about. When I can create a moody moment that induces a passionate feeling about anything and romance about that feeling...in the moment and in the photograph, then I am the artist.