My connection with imagery has been deeply rooted with a love for print magazines. I grew up reading ZigZag surf mag, Transworld Skateboarding, Dig BMX and a range of lifestyle, Mac and Photography magazine. Tangible products you can hold, feel and smell. Images you can tear out and stick in books or on walls.
As a designer and photographer I have always enjoyed combining photos and layout with written word. Even as a young kid I wrote stories, drew pictures and made them into small flip fold books.
As the move to digital progressed, magazines became harder to get my hands on, partly through a fault of my own, I was buying less of them but also with the move to digital consumption. Uploading photos to Instagram early days was great and allowed me to share my images in a simple elegant, easy to digest sorta way. But what I didn't realise was how this would change the relationship with creator & consumer to a point where the value and respect for the work depreciated. It has become more apparent with the recent move to this current "video first" approach, a term that makes me cringe. A buzz term that most people say without any real understanding of what they are talking about.
We want videos that are short and to the point, we need instant gratification, we need all the info in 6 seconds and we can't possibly be expected to stop, read, think for ourselves. The sheer amount of this content that is being created is overwhelming and I feel is drowning true creativity.
This made me really think about my photography. The lifespan of my images and connection with myself and the people who like them. I wanted to give them more substance, I don't want to post it on instagram and leave it to die. They mean more than that to me.
I'm not a fine art photographer, I tend to sway more to rough round the edges, docu style shots like you would see in street photography but I do that across all sub genes. I generally shoot a series of shots from a trip or a location and I wanted somewhere to put these for myself and for those that want to enjoy them in a bit more detail than a quick scroll.
I started by creating these detailed "Photo Journals" as I have started to call them. More on that in another post. But the point was to combine photos and design and to have a bit of fun making something.
The long term goal is to print them as a book. That will be accompanied with written word.
Which leads me to this post, blogging with words. It seems so old and obvious now that I think about it. But I feel that the more I only consume social media the more I become numb to everything I see, the more uninspired and the further away I stray from exploring my own ideas.
I used to write a lot. I rarely do that now.
So here we are... with a blog. A starting point for me to share stories and journeys, past, present and future. A place to home my photography and my love for writing stories. Some of these will hopefully go on to be made into photo books... that's the plan anyway.
For the time being let's start writing.
Catch you all soon, Dil