A Rite of Passage
As I continue to “look and observe” through my photographic path the more I realize that opportunities are everywhere. At times, photographing becomes second nature and yet other times the creative machinery must be kicked started. Now I’m realizing you need some sort of stamina to photograph habitually. For me, I feel the urge to photograph most of the time but when coupled with a little something called “Life & Responsibilities” things get a little bit more complicated.
This week was particularly interesting as a friend recommended I join Serious Compacts, a forum dedicated to these special little jewels and so I did. There I’m participating in a series of posts titled “Single in January” where the premise is to photograph with one camera and one lens for the entire month – quite a challenge right. Anyway, if you love compacts then I highly recommend you join – the guys/gals are a great group and will certainly make you feel right at home – its by far the warmest welcoming I’ve had of any forum.
Trying to find the right words to phrase this but I suppose my departure from street photography or more like my temporary hiatus, as I’ll never really abandon street, has fueled my creative juices in an unexpected direction. I find myself now more intrigue with shapes, forms, lines, architecture, landscapes, shadows, and just about anything that will make for a great composition again reinforcing the thought that photography is all around us.
Perusing the web for photography content is always a little adventure. I stumbled onto a quote from Saul Leiter, which says:
“I think that mysterious things happen in familiar places…. I like ambiguity in a photograph… When we do not know why a photographer has taken a picture, and when we do not know why we are looking at it, all of a sudden, we discover something that we start seeing.”
You know when you’re trying to say something and you just can’t come up with the words. Well, I’ve often thought in a similar way but just couldn’t articulated as poignantly as Saul Leiter. This quote couldn’t have come at a better time. A time in which my photography is undergoing a metamorphosis of sorts, experimenting, exploring, and defining a style.
Ledesma Photography 
For me, these are the most challenging and interesting moments. We think we are a certain photographer and we make a meaningful detour, while maybe the previous genre was only a meaningful detour. And it doesn’t matter how or whenever it ends, as long as we become better in collecting moments.
Thanks Wouter, an excellent summary to my thoughts exactly. Lately, the more I photograph the more I realize that I can’t enclose myself into one genre. Photography is so rich and so varied that to be inclosed in any one type would be a suffering. How can I deny my eyes and the things they want to shoot. I see things all the time as I’m sure you do as well. Its that vision which is has no boundary, no street, no signs, but most importantly no limits.