Published

Photography is the air that I breath, it is what gets me up many mornings, a source of immense pleasure.  It can also be deeply frustrating and discouraging, days go by when I strive for inspiration and I just cannot be bothered anymore.  The more informed about the medium I become, the more critical I am of my own work and the harder I find it to produce images that satisfy me.  I am beyond technical issues, preferring a badly taken but contextually stimulating image to the perfect photograph, sharp where it needs to be creamily soft elsewhere. And yet I also want to be able to demonstrate my skills, doing weddings for my friends, creating photo books of underwater imagery, placing photographs on Flickr for comment.  I stress when I get no comments, I jump when my iPhone Flickr app warbles at me.

I find myself in a continual struggle between a narcissistic obsession with wanting praise of my work and an almost hermit like avoidance of external comment; fearing rejection and yet needing affirmation.  I find Facebook a puzzling sea of banality, but would deeply miss my access to the OCA Flickr community.

Other than Flickr I rarely expose my work to external scrutiny and yet whilst on vacation I was thrilled to hear that my lion fish portrait had been selected for publication in the "Big Issue in the North".  The first time they have run an underwater image and the first time any underwater image of mine has been published in any form.

This is not my first published photo, I have had images printed in two German newspapers, one in Suddeutscheszeitung, the biggest paper in the country.  Both were photos of Irish football, taken on my occasional forays into the world of sports photography.

Not quite the SZ, it was still nice to see my photo being used to illustrate a local interest piece in the weekend free paper.  In neither of these cases was my name used, even though I had asked for such as a condition of use.  Am I upset, not really, this comes back to my need for praise, but fear of exposure.  Both journals were above using my name in the byline for the image.  However, the photos helped to publicize a very close friends Gaelic Football club and I know that they were valued and enjoyed.

I often get the comment that I should publish or rather sell my photographs, I am just not bothered or even interested.  BUT, perhaps I should be.  It is not a need for money, my job supplies that, or a need for praise or acceptance.  However, the thought comes to mind that it might be a necessary developmental step to put my work into the public space and see what critical comment comes my way.  I plan a show for my final degree work, I know a couple of locations that I can rent for a reasonable fee and then bribe friends with a few drinks to come and see my "final degree show".  This, however, can only be affirmation of what I have done, it cannot help me to get to that final place.  I see other students participating in local shows and exhibitions, not easy for me in a still very foreign culture.

I have no conclusions to this short comment, other than that I need to start to think about publicizing my work, not to garner praise, but rather to expose myself to critique with a view to improving what I create.  My tutors comments are a help, but they are infrequent and just one voice, however important to my development within the framework of the degree.  Food for thought