"The reason I'm excited to talk to you, is my son in law is really in to photography. You should see his work. It's amazing! But he never does anything with it."
Join the f****ng club, I thought feeling how light the weight of my empty plastic cocktail glass was.
He went on to tell me his son in law was in the Amazon with his daughter right now. How expensive his son's gear is and he would like to know how his son could get in to something like this.
Spoiler alert: submit your best work then weeks later you get home from your day job, put on some nice artsy clothes, show up at the gallery, and get cornered by someone who wants to know how their son in law can become a successful artist while not working at it.
I should have told him the truth. I should have told him it might help to be here, finding out what this gallery thing is all about instead of in the Amazon on holiday indulging an expensive hobby with no creative focus.
But the truth is, anyone who is able to afford top of the line camera gear and a trip to the amazon to indulge an expensive hobby needs no advice from me...unless he actually wants to talk about photography.
Unless he wants to talk about making mistakes.
Oh, by the way, Hello. I'm Morgan Lee and I have been photographing for twenty years and making a lot of mistakes. I have logged my 10,000 hours in the craft and been on lots of adventures trying out lots of things. I will be talking about all of those things here on this weekly ezine.
Back in 2003 I switched to digital. Taking my first gallery piece on a camera that was less powerful than a camera on a crappy flip phone.
Entering the Dead River
I then got a fancier digital camera and took lots of pictures, then years later decided I wanted to get back in to film to create a Rolling Stone magazine style documentary depicting ballet dancers as little rock stars around the time the speculators were speculating that film was disappearing forever.
I've photograhed Real Florida Mermaids...
And spent lots of time trecking through the wilderness.
Throughout it all, I've tried a lot of different gear, emulated a lot of different styles.
Most of all, this ezine is about creating. Not the glamorous how I got the perfect shot, but the day to day. The process.
After twenty years of photographing Florida, I ended up in Tucson Arizona.
And here the adventure continues.
So whether you want creative ideas for photographing your pets,...
...straight talk about what it's like to work with varied gear,
...or just want to hang out with an artist every weekend to talk about creating and inspire your own endeavors, please consider joining me every Saturday morning right here at Fistful of Film where the adventure continues.
Now go hit the road and make your own stories.
~Morgan