Bill Jay: The Thing Itself

I absolutely love this reading, Bill Jay if full of great insights on being a photographer and I got so much out of this that I will remember forever.

He mentioned something about his own attitudes on the medium of photograph evolving, and that the medium is continuously changing. I can relate to this because I feel like my style of photography is changing all the time and I am always wanting to try something different, and I think a big reason for that is because the style of everyone else's photography is changing all the time as well.

I have always been bothered by the fact that when people look at a photograph, they don't take the time to think about the photographer who took the photo. Bill Jay said, "The disadvantage is that while a photograph is direction attention to its subject, it's de-emphasizing the role of the individual who made it. This does not mean that the attempt is without value, it may indeed influence your neighbor, but it does mean that the chances of being recognized by the public at large is less than likely." It is nice to hear him say that, but almost annoys me even more because I know that every photographer goes through that struggle and it will most likely never change.

One thing he did say that bothered me a little bit, was that it is impossible to make a healthy living by being an artistic photographer, the only way to make a living would be to become a college professor of photography. I don't agree with that statement at all, I think it depends on what kind of photography you are doing. If you end up working for a magazine, you can be as artistic as you want and probably get paid a good amount. Or if you are a family photographer and grow your business, you can most definitely make a decent living. You have to work yourself up to that point and just suck it up in the beginning if that is what you really want to do.

One of my favorite things he said is, "In order to photograph with any degree of continuous passion you must have a fascination for the subject." He also said, "Students take pictures of things they think their teacher would like, not what they like." I agree with that statement, in photography classes everyone trys their hardest to impress the teacher the most, even if the photograph they took isn't what they would have liked to have done. I think everyone needs to embrace their own style and not care what anyone else will think about it.