My plan is starting to come to life. Ignoring most external influences and online image-sharing websites, slowly, I am starting to rewire my head to get the images I want, not what I think others want. There has been a lot of stubbornness and a total rethink of sharing images. After working though a lot of shit, I’m starting to get positive results from the snippets I now let loose back onto Instagram. My hypothesis is to be yourself you must take a few years backward progress, reappear months or years later in an unexpected direction, refined and matured. A doubt I've always had is ignoring online feedback and throwing yourself in a direction that gets no acknowledgement, could just be blinkering yourself to the fact the works plain bad. I guess that’s a risk we must take.
The plan now is to keep the momentum going. It wouldn’t be the first time I have started to do something different then for one reason or another reverted to safer images. Keeping going through the failures and doubts is part of the game, photography is a battle of self. Like pushing yourself in any sport, the mental aspect gets little attention. Seize whatever mental wins you take and carry on pushing forward.
Thinking of my photographs as bodies of work, rather than singular images, Im finding my plan for whatever that body of work is keeps morphing. I now see my work as more emotional prints for display. Switching to 12x16 prints, I am now feeling like everything is starting to fit into place. The 35mm Leica is once again not the best camera for the job of making large prints. Damn that Leica, I love it so much, but it is the least appropriate camera for my images. To be fair is holding out quite well but when I have medium format and 5x4 in my kit, it’s going to get its ass kicked.
