I PASSED MY FIRST OFFICIAL CRITIQUE!
I am not going to lie, I was pretty nervous about getting my work critiqued by a professional photographer and thought I wouldn't do very well. Surprisingly, I passed and yet another milestone has been completed in my journey. I will say that I have received a lot of feedback from my teacher/peers during the critique session and my biggest take away from all of it is that I want my photos moving forward to tell a story. I have determined that if I am able to tell a story through my photo, regardless of the interpretation, I have succeeded as a photographer
I find this new outlook on photography very enlightening and I find comfort knowing that I now have some sort of a defined path I want to take. Since I want to tell stories with my photos, I have made a commitment to myself that I would take my camera everywhere I go so that I can catch daily life as it happens. I have also disciplined myself to shoot with one lens a month since I believe that this will help me get to know the limitations of my gear and also help me find new and creative ways of composing photographs. After doing this for a month, I have learned that the lens you put on your camera pretty much dictates the composition you want in your photos. This whole process that I am putting myself through has given me many different framing/compositional ideas and since I run with only one lens at any given time, the side effect is that I don't have to worry about gear - I can just focus on creating the photo with just the gear I have with me.
Now that I have passed my first ever critique in the Arcanum, my next challenge was to produce (10) new works while taking guidance from the fellow peers and teacher. As mentioned, I want my photos to tell a story to my viewer and I believe that I have successfully accomplished this in the photos you see here.
I hope you enjoy them and will see you next time.
KEEP ON KEEPING ON!