I’ve been photo-blogging for a while now. Some of you may already see my weekly posts on my Greg’s Take blog, where I share pictures I’ve taken over the years — or pictures of people or places that stir up nostalgic feelings in me. A large part of what drives a photographer is a wish to stop time – or at least to capture a moment within time, and portray it to others in a way that allows them to connect with it in their own way.
It’s a very personal impulse even when you are working on a commercial photography project and it informs and impacts the final image in ways the viewer never knows anything about. And that’s fine; the viewer of the photo should be moved by the image for his or her own personal reasons. Commercial photography work is only slightly different in that you are not generally drawing from your own life experience so much as the vision established for the marketing of whatever it is you are photographing. You still need to bring your creative abilities to bear on commercial work, and that always derives from your own personal experiences. That’s what makes it art — and I like to believe that my commercial photography is highly artful.
After all these years being behind the camera, it’s been challenging and exciting to share the photos online, on my blog and increasingly on social media. I’ve had to absorb so much new technology over the years just in terms of the photographic equipment and post-production software that I’ve barely had time to delve into the mysteries of Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest. And yet, if you want your work exposed to the broadest possible audience these channels can’t be overlooked and so I’ve made tentative efforts to share my work on those channels.
While I like the simplicity of letting of the images speak for themselves, I prefer having the photo blog to give the viewer a little more information about what I was thinking or feeling when I took the picture.
