John M. Setzler, Jr.

I was glad to see a couple comments from some friends on the first half of this monologue.  Both friends who left feedback on the original post are accomplished photographers, and I admire their work.  Both of them, however, posted ideas that aren’t what I had in mind.  I stopped the first half of this post without answering my own question intentionally.  I was sorta hoping to get some feedback with ideas about what the ‘next step’ in this game is or should be.  Joe and Nathan both agree that the next step should be pushing and expanding boundaries.  Both of them also agree that teaching is a worthwhile endeavor.  I agree with both ideas, and I’ll also discuss them here.

Pushing the Boundaries:

Exploring new artistic concepts and venturing outside the box is definitely something everyone should do.  This idea, however, is still an mid-game concept in this game of chess.  After securing the center of the board, our objective becomes one of breaking down the defensive barrier of our opponent and ultimately producing a checkmate.  The checkmate is our goal.  Getting outside our box with the camera may help expedite this process if we don’t already know what our final goal will be.  Exploring new ideas may help us realize the unknown goal.  We may stumble across something that sucks us in like the smell that triggers our senses when we walk past the Godiva chocolate shop in the mall.  We know there is something good there, but we just have to walk inside to see what it is.  This idea does examine ways to the ‘next step.’

Teaching:

I would love to teach, and suprisingly enough, I have been working on that idea for a few months.  It’s not visible on this website yet, but I’m working on an online classroom, but it’s quite time consuming to write the text and prepare lessons for a class.  I think that teaching photography would be quite rewarding in many ways, but I just don’t have a great venue for that… yet…

So what is the next step?

As I mentioned in the first part of this discussion, lots of photographers spend many hours producing images in an effort to receive external validation from their circle of friends.  This is a valid part of the game, but I think we need to look inward instead.  What is the subject (or subjects) that we love to photograph on a personal level?  Should we remain random and just pay attention to whatever we see or should we focus to produce a body of work that encompasses our personal passions? 

I guess the answer to this would be based on overall goals.  If photography is providing the bread and butter, we may be limited in what we can do towards our personal goals beyond putting food on the table.  In some rare instances, it is entirely possible to let your passions provide for you, but there are only a few who can make that happen.  Most of the professional photographers I know are booked up with weddings and commercial work to the point that their personal passions in photography take a constant back seat.  There is one in particular who is in such demand in my town that he takes his vacations and leaves his camera gear at home just to get away from photography for a while.  Maybe his commercial work has become his passion, but it wasn’t like that for him when he started out in photography. 

There is nothing wrong with commercial work being the passion.  By the same token, there is nothing wrong with flowers, pets, children, wagon wheels, and sunsets.  I simply believe that the key is finding out what or where the passion is and following it…