The Photos We Don't Share

Back in August, I wrote about the Photos We Don’t Take. I wrote about the style of photo that I wanted to take more of and vowed to take more. So far, I’ve not succeeded. And if I haven’t succeeded, I can’t share those photos. But, what about the photos that we take and don’t share?

That’s the topic of this newsletter.

Before I dive into the topic, here’s a shameless self promo. My Northern Landscapes Calendar for 2024 is now available for purchase via Lulu. Here’s the front and back covers. I appreciate any purchases. I give these as gifts to my family during the holidays. They make great gifts.

So, the photos that we don’t share. What are they?

If you’re an amateur photographer, you might share everything that you take that you think is good, but for me and maybe for you, I’ve defined my photography and my style and my brand via the photos that I share. For me, it’s landscapes and seascapes from mainly the Lake Superior region and to a lessor extent from the places that I travel to teach photography workshops. Because of that, most of you expect photos from me that look like the following.

It’s a rocky shore next to water.

You see these because I’ve defined my style by the primary subject that I like to photograph (water scenes) and by the way I like to photograph things. The above photo is new and hasn’t been shared until now, but I always planned on sharing it.

More likely, you’d think of my work as verticals. I love shooting vertical images, and I have to force myself to shoot horizontal images. I do the latter because I need to get images that will be used in my annual calendar.

But, I shoot a lot of images that I seldom share publicly unless there’s a reason for me to do so. For example, I’ve been posting infrared images over the last year or so. I’ve done so because I feel like I’m getting the results that I like, and I want to teach other people how to have the fun I’ve been having shooting infrared. I decided to start sharing my work to see if there was any interest.

There was.

But, there’s a whole category of photos that I take that I seldom if ever share with people other than friends. I like to shoot street shots that show the details of towns that are never photographed or shown. For example, this ladder up against a green building in downtown Grand Marais.

Or signs that I think are funny even though they aren’t meant to be funny. Many times it is just me who gets the reason why I think they are funny.

I have a camera that I’ll grab specifically for shooting this style of images. It’s the Ricoh GRIII. It’s a fun little camera with an APS-C sensor and a sharp lens. I really enjoy using it especially as a pocket camera for shooting images that I seldom share.

Because I have no intension in sharing these images, they don’t have to be in my normal style or normal category or of subjects that people think of when they think of what I do. It’s freeing that way.

These photos often stay on my camera for months before I load them into my editing software. Sometimes I’ll share them with friends, but it may be years after I took them. I took the following one in February of 2020. I shared it with friends just this week. It sat unedited on my computer since 2020. I just got to it. I like it, but it isn’t what any of you probably thought I would have taken.

Maybe other photographers or artists are more consistent with their art than I am, but I like to photograph a lot of random subjects at random and I never know what exactly I’ll want to photograph.

The only reason that my work on the Internet seems consistent is that I only share the work which is consistent with the way that I want my brand and my style to be when seen by the public.

So I’ll never share something like this.

Or this.

But there’s another reason that I’ll never share stuff like this, and that’s because I’m under no illusion that all of my quirky photos — even though I love them and love taking them — will be of interest to my audience. So while I know some people will like them, most won’t, and if I can only get your attention once a day or once a week, I want to make sure it’s a photo that you’ll likely like and will maybe cause you to have a great day and maybe even buy a print of it.

So I’m curious, do you take photos of subjects that you know only you are likely to appreciate?

Because if not, you should. It’s freeing. It’s fun. And it’s just for you. In art making art for yourself is important, and if it is just for you it is the most important art you can create.

Until next time

I hope you enjoyed this issue. I’ll see you again in two weeks!