Perpetual Photography

Photography: all-day.

So friend– we have established the fact:

All photography is good photography.

Also,

All cameras are good cameras.

Which means this:

Perhaps the focus of our life should be to devote every waking minute of our days to our artistic craft (photography). This means, shooting, culling our work, selecting our photos, and constantly revising our portfolio.

Photography, 7 days a week, all-day play

Photography is play. This means, anything involving photography is fun!

Thus, we should never stop our love and pursuit for photography.

For example, when you’re bored– go out and shoot photos for fun! It is like playing, to go out, walk around, and shoot street photography or just to practice your composition and framing.

Never stop photographing (until you die)

I like the idea of perpetual motion; for us to never stop moving.

Of course in reality, there ain’t such thing as ‘perpetual motion’. Sooner or later, everything needs to stop or come to an end.

But assuming we will live to be 120 years old; ask yourself:

How can I keep photography fun, entertaining, and challenging until I die?

My simple idea is this:

Allow yourself to be obsessive about photography.

Photography is your life; your life is photography

This means, let the focus of your life be photography.

Think about photography all the time. Constantly research visual art, and constantly study photography. Study the compositions and the philosophies of the masters of photography, and always strive to take your own personal photography to the next level.

Seek stronger visual stimuluses for yourself, in terms of embracing more ‘extreme’ post-processing, or finding sources of visual inspiration that are more stimulating to you.

Swim in the stream of your own images

For me to keep myself inspired in photography, I constantly go back to my old work. I use Dropbox to keep my photos organized, and I will always go back and re-look at my old photos, to re-inspire myself with my past images. Also using this as a chance to re-upload older photos to my blog (I encourage you to also do the same with having your own WordPress.org photo blog).

Seek inspiration from yourself (and your old work)

It is good to find inspiration from the master photographers from the past. But also find inspiration from yourself and your old work.

The great benefit of looking at your past work is that you can see how far you’re come in your photography, and track your own evolution and progress as a photographer and visual artist.