Who do we take the pictures for?
Lately, I cannot help it but to think that, in this hyper connected world, we are loosing the target, the goal, the reasons for what we do.
Think about this… Who do we, photographers, take the pictures for? Is it just for us, for our Facebook friends, for our egos, for money or perhaps, in the sake of art?
I feel it is very important to answer this question honestly because, somehow, the reasons behind the photos we take, tend to show in them.
I have no doubt that I take the pictures for myself, as a way of discovering the world around me and, in the process, getting to know myself better. But recently, while in that process, I discovered something else: I also take pictures for the people who, one way or another, are the main characters of the story; the people for whom the topic I am working on is an integral part of their life.
This answer started to build up a short back when, in the middle of my efforts to promote my most recent work “Basketball is Life”, a friend of mine, with a much more marketing kind of mind than me, said: “It’s good that you want your work to be seen during the coming Basketball World Cup but, bear in mind that your main goal is not to show it to the basketball community but to the photography people out there so that, perhaps in the future, they might hire you for some more work.” It got me thinking. A lot. There is nothing wrong with that argument, right? If I want to work as a photographer, I need to be noticed by the people who hire photographers. Right, yes, let’s focus on that then.
It turned out to be impossible. As perfect as that argument might sound, the truth is that, after months of going through these thoughts over and over again, I have not been able to silence my obsessive desire to show this work to the basketball people, to all those who have ever felt about the sport anywhere close to the way I felt about it in my youth.
So there you go, I take pictures for me and for them, for all of us who share a deep emotion. And I guess that’s the reason why it makes me so extremely happy to see them posing, proud, with my work in their hands. They are the ones who can really appreciate what BASKETBALL IS LIFE is all about.
One response to Who do we take the pictures for?
It is difficult to imagine someting more rewarding than making people feel happy with your work. You are great.