A First

Happy New Year. This isn’t an attempt to set a resolution – resolutions often fail. I know that. I’ve done it enough before. 

What this is – and has been for the past couple months – is a means for me to prove to myself that I am an artist. That rotten voice in the back of my head is saying, “yea, maybe, but not a very good one.” I’m my own worst critic.

I’ve been doing this photography/writing thing for a long time. I do get paid for it. I enjoy my job. I get to cover/see cool things like barefoot water skiing.

Is the above an award-winning photograph? No. But it’s a decent one. I had fun doing it. More importantly – I did it. I’m fighting a cold and didn’t really want to go to this event, but I did and I had fun and I didn’t fall in the water.

What this really is – is a first step towards making myself more visible. While I do journalistic type images for my job – what I’m doing to exercise my creativity – is fine art dog photography. If you peruse this site, you’ll see some of the images I’ve completed. There’s some I’ve won awards for – yea – awards. That was new this year – entering photography competitions. That was really hard for me. It still is hard for me.

Why dogs – why not? I love dogs. Dogs can be photographed in outdoor locations. I don’t care to do studio work. Lots of people have and love dogs. I have dogs – beautiful dogs – one that’s pretty well trained to be a model, the other is in the making. I don’t want to photograph people – except in my job. Lots of people photograph people for money. I don’t want to do that. I want to photograph dogs for money. I want to get really good at it. I want people beating down my door to take photos of their dogs.

Sally Mann wrote that “Unless you photograph what you love, you are not going to make good art.” I love dogs – I love cats too but cats usually can’t be photographed outside. I love horses, but I’m not in the horse world. So dogs it is.

This is day one of announcing that I am an artist and in order to get good at it, I have to work at it. This is the year that I’m going to work hard at it.

Sally Mann also wrote (I’ll quote her a lot) “it is work, and more work, that makes an artist.”

Am I going to write/photograph every day? I’m going to try my best to do it. I am going to continue to enter photo competitions – every month. I am going to start to aggressively market myself as a dog photographer and try to make some money at it – hopefully before every Tom, Dick and Harry hangs out a dog photographer for hire sign and takes my work away because I can’t get out of my own way and stand up for what I can do and what I can do well.

Come the end of 2026 – if I’m lucky enough to still be around and able to work – I hope I have a nice collection of work to show off.

Until later …