It's a photographer's world

So I'm just sitting here in my room listening to music, editing pics, and browsing the web...what's new? lol...I'm looking at some of my favorite photographer's blogs - and for all of you who aren't photographers let me just tell you we are in our own little world, we have our "Beyonce's," and "Justin Beiber's" of the photography world. The celebrity photographers. - I'm looking at the blogs reading about their experiences speaking all over the world and it hit me! All of them have some sort of signature. Just like a singer has a signature sound or a top model has his/her signature walk or pose. These photographers have signature....I'll just call them signature ideas. These signature ideas are the ideas they sell to other people. They actually sell these ideas to people, well photographers, because we pay lots of money I'm talking thousands of dollars to hear them speak for just a few hours. Okay so I'll be real for a sec. because I've never actually paid more than $150 loL but seriously people spend hundreds and thousands of dollars for photography motivational speaking. If you got it like that, by all means go'head. This isn't a bash post. I'm not hatin on anyone spending or making money, it was just a thought that part of the celebrities' successes are their signature ideas. Be it the idea to use natural light or the idea to dream and continue to dream or work with film or whatever! What will my signature be?

I recently attended a photography workshop that was great! I loved it! We talked about the technicalities of shooting, amongst other things and I went away thinking okay this is how I need to shoot because this is what I like. I like this photographers style so I need to shoot like this. Well, I just had two shoots in the past week and I was not my regular self because I was thinking all about the technicalities of how I "need to shoot!" I wasn't thinking about MY signature (hadn't thought about it at that point) and it felt like I was trying to fit a circle into a square, just didn't fit and although I came back with nice photos they weren't MY photos.

I expressed that to my boyfriend last night as we were talking - and I love him because he always brings me back to Nina - he said, "Nina you know how to take a picture, you know the technicalities already and you're great at it. What's different about your images is YOU, your creativity. If you want to practice anything practice using your imagination, your point of view. Not another person's." So thinking about that and now thinking about signatures I wonder what my signature will be...I want my signature idea to be to follow your heart. Follow what you feel is right, what fits into your style and personality. It might not be the norm, but so. Television, texting, blogging, rap, heck! even digital photography wasn't the norm at one point.

I know every so often I have these rambling blog posts, but I know I'll just look back at these posts years from now and smile, reading how I had epiphanies throughout my life :) Here is a song, that I LOVE, from the musical Urinetown that I think fits this post perfectly ;-)