“An Insightful End To An Otherwise Unsuccessful Photo Walk”

While living in Denver, Co, I was still an amateur at shooting Street Photography. By “amateur” I would define it as someone who was putting the current social media trends above my own satisfaction in the shots that I took. I spent more time trying to carefully emulate other successful photographers rather than finding my own style and simply enjoying the process. After walking around downtown Denver for two hours and finding no compositions or subjects that caught my interest, I packed up, hopped on the train back home, and called it a day. Before departure, I noticed a man with a book sitting in the next seat across from me to the left. He was older, but he didn’t wear his age. There was this sense of calm around him, as if nothing in the world could bother him or take his attention away from what he was reading. As the train pushed forward, there was this immediate reaction to take my camera out of my bag, slap on my 50mm and snap a shot just as we exited the tunnel. I took this photo with no expectations of popularity or generating tons of “likes”. It was a photo I shot because of genuine excitement of capturing an interesting subject. This photo continues to teach me a valuable lesson that pushes me forward in my career; shoot because you love it. Photography, like any form of art, is about self expression and how we see the world through the lens and we must always remember that.