Passion

I see pictures I want to take all the time. Usually, they're fleeting things -- the play of the light through the trees, the grin of a young woman jogging toward someone she knows, the goofy bopping of someone in his car who doesn't realize he's being watched. All the time. And before I can even think of taking a picture, before I can even lift my camera, it's over, just the stuff of memories.

I've had a picture stuck in my head lately, just waiting to be taken. I see it every day on my way to work, as I pass by a shopping center near my house. Every single morning, there's a flock of pigeons that takes off just as I pass, makes a synchronized few swooping loops over the block, and then sets down again. Every single morning. And, I mean, they're pigeons, right? Pigeons aren't known for being photogenic, but there's something about the motion that takes my breath away on a daily basis.

I struggle with photography as an art form, from time to time. I've gotten pretty good at taking a good picture. In some sense, it's very clinical: pick the right lens, wait for the right light, add a bit of luck and some framing, and achieve a decent picture. And I can do that, mostly. I post about 2% of the photos I shoot. If I were more organized, I'd throw all the others away, but occasionally, I'll go back and find some among them that grow on me after a while, so perhaps it's better than I'm not organized, but that's a bit off-topic.

What I feel that I'm missing in my own art is passion. Not passion for the subject, because I've got that in spades, but passion in the subject, capturing that brief, perfect moment in time in a way that causes people to "get" it when they see it. I'm still learning how to do that. Without passion, it's just stock photography, right?

What's missing in my increasingly sizeable portfolio is passion, and I'm still learning how to capture that -- give me time.