Transitions

 Just wanted to share some thoughts about my  transition of becoming something more than just a point and shoot photographer.
 When I started to get serious or at least sort of serious about the idea of improving my photography one of my goals was very simple. Just to be able to become good enough at photography that my family would be proud to hang my art on their walls, because we all know that our friends and family can be some of our toughest critics.
I’m a little older than some of you out there. I just celebrated my 61st birthday. Actually I was trying real hard to not draw any attention from people on how old I was getting and for the most part I succeeded.
I’ve spent a lot of my life behind the wheel of a truck, driving into almost every nook and cranny of the country, but never really getting to see it. I mean really see it. It seems there was always a tight schedule that just didn’t allow me the time to get out and play tourist very often. I never felt like I had accomplished much with my life other than staring at the white line spinning past me. I wanted one simple thing. To leave something behind that my family could hang on their wall, point to and say with some pride that my dad took that. My self confidence in my ability to do that was definitely not real high. Perhaps some of you have said the same thing to yourself as I did. I’ll never be able to be that good, but a funny thing happened on my way through life. Despite that small hurdle I finally bit the bullet and bought a DSLR while I was on the truck and started shooting whenever I got the chance. Slowly my images started getting better and in the last two years somehow I got there. I reached one of my first goals. Still not quite sure how, but I did. Just this last week two of my family members have requested large prints of a couple of my images. One of them a 20″ x30″ or bigger. She has it saved on her phone as her screen saver and her mom said she’s been drooling over it. My sister wants an 11×13 or bigger of another one of my images and this after telling me just a few months earlier that she didn’t want any photos bigger than a 5×7. Needless to say that makes me feel pretty good.

My point is that I wanted to quite more than once. I fet that I had nowhere near enough talent or creativity to be good at something as challenging as photography. Partly because I’m OLD. At least I feel that way some days. I kept on though. And no, I may never be a Peter Lik, or a Scott Kelby or a Trey Ratcliff as much as I would like to be, but I can be me and that’s ok. I kind of like being me most of the time.
The same goes for many of you out there. If you just keep trying and working at the craft of photography you’ll do far better than those that have such an incredible amount of skill they don’t think they have to work at it.  So whatever you do, keep shooting. Never give up. If you enjoy it and get pleasure from it that’s all that counts.  Now go take some pictures.