follow your heart

Whether or not we’d like to admit it, our families have a strong influence on us. I was once told that the things deep in our psyche can go back five generations and that by knowing and understanding them, we can better know and understand ourselves. And while I myself haven’t explored this in any meaningful way, intuitively I feel this to be true. For me, there is strong evidence of this in my desire to pursue photography. There are times when I read others’ stories of their beginnings in this craft and admire the romantic notion that it was love at first sight. However photography wasn’t something that I fell in love with when I was a kid and my father first placed a camera in my hands. Instead it has been a recent, slow, and sometimes frustrating labour, punctuated with incredible highs that are growing into a deep abiding kind of love and respect for this craft.

Although my father wanted both of his girls to take up photography, we never did so in his lifetime. While that could be cause for great sadness or regret on my part, it hasn’t been. We were exposed to cameras and photography all our lives. Even today books on the history of Rollei and the 1939 Leica Manual sit on my shelves and I have a host of camera gear that is a mystery to me. I find these things comfortable to have around me and as time goes by, they are taking on a role in my learning journey. My father knew one day I would be on this journey and instead of forcing his dream on us, he gave us wisdom to help find our own way here.

One of the best pieces of advice he gave was to follow your heart. He was big on letting us choose for ourselves and never pushed us to become doctors, lawyers, or accountants–not that there is anything wrong with those professions but that was the conventional wisdom of the day in our family. It was fine by him that I spent my first few years in university getting a general arts degree and if he minded he never let on. Following your heart isn’t easy but it is undoubtedly the most soul quenching thing you will do.

I am writing this post for today for two reasons. One is that today is the anniversary of my father’s passing and I like to always do something that has a special connection to him. The second is that I read something on David duChemin’s blog last week that really bothered me (see comment 22) and I thought this would be a good way to respond to it. (I think the blog etiquette is keep it civil over at his house and to bring the fight over to mine.) A reader was responding to some new work of David’s that he did not find as inspiring as David’s writings and teachings; in fact he called them “good travel snaps“. I myself found the images to be magical and they told a great story of how you evolve in this craft. My image today is an old photograph that someone took of my father. It isn’t a great composition or compelling in any artistic way but someone took this picture because it mattered to them and many years later, it continues to matter…to me. I look at it and know that my roots in this craft are deep and that my journey is an honest one. So I say to Commentor 22, as a critic you may think you have an eye but what you’re missing is heart.

My encouragement to others on this journey with me is this: follow your heart and make images that matter to you.