104/365
February 17, 2016
Wiscasset, ME, USA
I had a wonderful dream last night. I talked to an old man and he told me that it's really important to keep shooting how I see and not to try to change anything up to give my work more meaning. I was struggling with that lately. A lot of my pictures seemed too perfectionist, too plain and meaningless to me.
But I know now that that's not true. I have always found a lot of beauty and emotion in scenes that to others might seem mundane. Little everyday life pictures that tell a story about how I see the world. That in itself has meaning. If I can capture how something makes me feel, it makes someone else feel something too if I'm lucky. It doesn't always need to be deep or socially relevant. Making something ordinary look beautiful that would have otherwise been unnoticed is as important as pointing out something bad to the world. I don't like to shout in my photographs.
The old man told me that being able to see both and shoot in both styles simultaneously is my greatest gift. Thank you, old man. I wouldn't have noticed any of this without your help.