Just A Man With A Camera

This week I recieved my first order of prints that I'm going to attempt to sell, and oddly it was a strange experience seeing my work in print. Not because I've never printed anything before. This isn't even the first time I have attempted to sell prints of my work. However it has been a very long time. I used to work in a photolab, and horribily abused my ability to make prints for myself with zero supervision. I had a closet full of copies of my work, to the point that I had to get rid of it all because I was just moving pictures over and over and over again that I was doing nothing with.

Why wasn't I printing anymore? Partly because of money. Let's face it, printing isn't cheap. I think another factor was because while eventhough I was improving as a photographer over the years, I was losing confidence in my photos because I was focusing on how much better I thought other photographers were rather than focusing on myself. Undeniably the rise of the prevalence of social media played a roll in this. There was also the fact that I worked in a camera shop and was looking at so many other photographers work and ran into what we would now recognize as toxic attitudes. So often you would find people who would look at your work and tell you all the things that are wrong with it, rather than what you did well. I'm all for some constructive criticism, but when I think back on that time there were so many people who were almost excited to tell you what you did wrong rather than what you did right. It will make you gun shy about showing off any of your work to people, and make that little asshole voice of "what's the point" scream loudly in your head.

So I got these first prints made, and honestly it felt really good to see my work in print again. Even if it was just my wife and I in our kitchen sorting through them, it felt good to hold some of these in my hands and look at them not on a screen. It's that physical, tactile connection to a piece of work that I think I really missed. Over the last year of making a strong effort to recaputre and rebuild my passion of photography, I repeatedly read and hear others talk about the importance of getting your work printed.  They harp on it, and with this first order of prints I get it. I wish I hadn't forgotten it in the first place.