Finding purpose

Beginning of New Year is the time for everybody (me included) to make posts summarizing last year and post their “bests”. For me, it is also time to think. I am still wondering, where I want to take my photography in next months, years etc.

Nowadays, I feel I can make technically correct images, most of the time. I am getting handle on focusing and hand shaking. I am even figuring out composition. Yet, when I go out, I feel like there is nothing for me to photograph. I look at my environmental, and what I see looks so banal. Most of those photographs I already shot. Sunset, shadows, even red berries. And even If I did not, I look at the scenes through viewfinder or later in Lightroom, and they just don’t appeal to me. Something is amiss.

The realization was coming to me slowly. It was the effect of some good reads recently. About Sabrina’s new project, “The Village Life”. Learning about Exposure from Faded & Blurred. And great editorial by James Estrin on state of photography for National Geographic.

I feel like my images lack the purpose. I have nothing to say. I am taking photographs, some technically perfect, some unique and creative, but there is no story coming though. So this is my goal for next stage. Work on my stories.

Today’s image is another season, same place as one of my more popular images, Fall in Chicago. Taken during our Thanksgiving holiday trip to Windy City, on early evening on crisp, November day. Or was it December already? Cold came early this year.