Photograph What You Love
Don't let the world nudge you away from the things that inspire you.
Years ago, a mentor I respect asked me what I was going to do with all my photos of abandoned places. He meant: how are you going to make money off them?
I heard: why are you wasting your time on this stuff?
He was right, I said to myself: I’m wasting my time!
For a while, I changed what I was shooting and stopped looking for abandoned places.
I’d drive by some really cool old broken down barns, churches or schools, thinking to myself: it’s not worth it if there isn’t money attached to the outcome. Every time I passed a place by, I was crushed.
He wasn’t trying to hurt me, and was only being practical. I have always struggled (still do!) to make money off my photography, so he was trying to be helpful and nudge me in the right direction: take photos people want to buy.
But the question haunted me for a bit. I was paralyzed.
“What are you going to do with all those photos of abandoned stuff?” - his voice kept playing in my head.
I didn’t have a good answer.
Make a book? (That no one would buy.)
Have an art show? (That no one would go to.)
He was saying that abandoned barns, crumbling farmhouses, and collapsed grain elevators weren’t really sellable, and he’s kinda right. Very few people hang decayed houses on their wall. Nobody pays a photographer for shooting things that are falling apart, do they?
I shifted my photography. I started shooting the things I thought I could sell, like pretty flowers.
I was hyper-focused on getting the right light at the right time of day, so I could get those sun-drenched, sellable landscapes.
I was dialed-in to getting the “nicest” photos I could get. Golden hour. Perfect light.
I felt a little off.
I felt like I wasn’t being myself.
The pretty flowers were in focus and the landscapes looked fine, but I was missing something, and going out with my camera far less often.
Photography just wasn’t as much fun.
Abandoned places have always been meaningful to me.
They’re not just interesting textures and dramatic light... they’re stories.
Every collapsed farmhouse was someone’s dream once.
What I’m photographing is the remnants of human effort, hope and frailty.
I’m a photographer because taking photos is the only way I know of to communicate what’s inside me. I do it because I often don’t have words to describe how it feels to be me, and instead of screaming, I take photos.
It’s taken a while to find my way back to embracing these places gain - sales be damned.
And once I got back, almost immediately, I felt at home.
I started planning more and more abandoned trips, always remembering that there would be “pretty” things along the way. (I could get those too!)
I shot this:
On the way to photograph this:
My photography has seriously improved over the past year, and I think it’s because I’m embracing abandonment again. My Google Maps pins are multiplying (these aren’t even close to all of them).
I stopped taking photos for an imaginary buyer and started taking pictures for myself.
It’s been a wonderful lesson for me, and has actually made my “pretty” pictures more interesting. There’s a touch - just a tiny one - of darkness I’m trying to inject in them lately. There’s more “me” in the photos: weirdness and blurry details. Grain and messed-up corners.
I’m delving in deep into who I am. I’m finding the soul of my photography, and channeling everything I am into my photos, which means making them perfectly imperfect.
These incredibly beautiful garden scenes you see below are a little messed up. I’m using vintage, flawed, terribly soft lenses with some wild lens blur (sometimes modified with by putting stuff on my lens filters) and doing my best to find the heart of what I feel when I’m there instead of getting the cleanest, “sellable” photos.
I’m happier now.
Listening to our heart is difficult!
My mentor was right: selling photos of broken-down things isn’t super easy.
I think I’ve probably only sold a few hundred dollars of abandoned photos, EVER, but I was losing my will to go out and make new work by only focusing on pretty stuff.
I (you?) should remember that good mentors give well-meaning, accurate advice, but when that advice turns you into a robot, maybe give it a second thought!
This doesn’t mean ignoring everyone who challenges you, because being uncomfortable is one of the best ways to grow. Hard questions are good, and I absolutely do need to get better at selling my images, no matter what the subject matter.
But the way I took the advice wasn’t making me better. Instead, it was dulling my inner self. I was making my photos look like a million other photos of pretty things.
I’m still taking photos of nature, flowers, and golden-hour landscapes, but instead of the cleanest, most “sellable” photos, I’m gravitating toward this:
This:
This:
This:
And these:
Terribly, wonderfully imperfect, just like me.
Think about a subject you’ve quietly stopped shooting, not because you lost interest, but because the world around you nudged you in a different direction. Maybe your favorite subject matter never gets any Instagram likes. Maybe no one comments on the photos you hold dear to your heart.
Who cares.
Ask the question: who are you as a photographer? Dive into that. Focus on it.
I have always been asking myself what makes me stand out. How can I get images that are different from everyone else’s?
As long as I’m true to myself, I’ll get there. So will you.
So my advice to you:
Shoot what you love this week, even if nobody’s buying it (yet.)
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