Nike hit it on the head with one of the most well known taglines out there, but have you ever thought about your photography with that line in mind?

Just do it. Just take the photo. Don’t worry about what people are going to think about it.

Just do it.

I am going to borrow from ‘Linchpin’, a must read book by Seth Godin, by using one of the examples from the book.

Think of a street busker, sharing his music with people walking by. Two points to take note of.

Sharing and walking by. Or rather, you sharing as people walk by.

No matter how much you share your passion – people will walk by. Not everyone will stop. It will be completely pointless for the musician to run after these people trying to impress them with his music.

Will it not make more sense for the musician to just do what he does? Make music, indulge his passion, enjoy his own art until someone comes along who stops and listens.

Even just for a second?

Too often we run around after people trying to impress them with our photography.

Difficult.

Tiring.

Pointless.

Photography is something you (hopefully) do for yourself and when you do it like that, indulging your own passion, people will eventually stop. Perhaps not immediately and perhaps not a thousand people at once.

But they will.

Someone will stop.

Someone will enjoy what you have to give.

Don’t get caught up in the never-ending chase of looking for people to buy your images or magazines who want to publish your work. There are a lot of photographers running around trying to impress everybody with their photography. Yeah, the recognition is great and makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside but surely that is not the reason to take photographs?

Follow your passion. Take photographs for yourself, let’s say that again… for yourself… and eventually people will stop and ‘listen’ to what you want to show them.

If you cannot ‘just do it’ for yourself, how can you ‘just do it’ for other people?

Follow your passion. Take photographs for yourself.

Just do it!

Gerry

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 at 6:36 am and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed or trackback from your own site.