Are you trying to find ‘your voice’?
There are two things I often hear from clients and followers:
Ana, you have a good eye.
and
I simply don't have the eye for it!'
Talking about eyes…how incredibly cool are they?!
Your words made me think. Can the eye be trained?
SPOILER ALERT- Yes, I think so.
Let me tell you what influences the way I look at things, and people, and everything around me.
The big shift happened in 2013. I fell in love with film through a course I did with Hailey Bartholomew on CreativeLive.
The final project on that course was called '30 days of film'. We had to film something everyday for 30 days and edit a video of a maximum of 2 minutes. I decided to film things that I found beautiful, or inspiring, or that made me smile. Sounds simple, doesn't it?
Let me put this into context. At the time I was a mother of two toddlers, I had just been made redundant during my last pregnancy, I was trying to find my feet as a photographer, I had very little time for myself and I was totally sleep deprived.
This is a pretty accurate photo of me back then.
So the first day I went to find my 'beautiful thing' to film, do you know what happened? I just couldn't find it.
I looked in every room, around the house, the garden...I eventually found something, more or less acceptable. The second day was pretty much the same; and the third day....but after a while, I started to discover little things. The little baby vests hanging in the line, my husband carrying his baby girl in his arms, the happy smiles of the kids in the park, my lovely dog Luna having a swim, that little decoration that I bought in that special trip.
Suddenly I realised that I have gone from not being able to find anything to having too many things to film!
It was during this experience that I felt what 'real' gratitude felt like. I realised gratitude was something different to what I had thought it was. It was not about 'I feel grateful for my family", no, no, it was way simpler than that but much more powerful. It brought me to the present moment and filled my heart. The smell of fresh mint, a hug, that quiet cup of tea, baby toes, little hands, rain drops on a leaf...
One of my signature photos while I worked as a family photographer, baby toes!
If you are curious, you can watch the 2 minutes film here (be warned, it was my first video ever!). Technically brutal, but I love it so much.
And so I kept going. My eyes kept looking for these things and my camera followed.
As Annie Leibovitz wrote in one of her books:
“I’ve said about a million times that the best thing a young photographer can do is to stay close to home. Start with your friends and family, the people who will put up with you. Discover what it means to be close to your work, to be intimate with a subject (...) you should take pictures of something that has meaning for you…”
I always try to apply this principle to my personal work and for my clients. That is the secret of the 'good eye' many say I have. I am able to translate my own feelings of curiosity, gratitude, beauty, appreciation, etc into images.
So, do you want to find your voice? Train your eye first. Look for the things that make you feel, that are close to your heart, that tell your story. I believe that is the key to show up in an authentic way, in a world full of noise and more of the same.
And this is my note to self today. Because I TOO need to be reminded some now again to look through my own lens and nurture my voice.
I found this photo in my archives today. I can feel the gratitude and the open heart ❤️
Big Love,
Ana x
