Separation Between Church and State

This blog was intended to be an extension of my company.  The posts were to encompass insights into the inner workings of the building of my soon-to-be-empire, to inspire, to share relative information, and to (let's be honest) continue to generate that eternally sought-after web traffic.  Often our intention blurs the line for what is, instead, necessary- this blog is no exception.

I haven't written posts as frequently as I promised myself I would.  More importantly, I am finding myself leaning towards writing posts that graze over the relative content of a photography company based in Salt Lake City, Utah.  I thought I would be writing a post gushing about every photo shoot, offering teasing examples of images that would be sure to lure you to my overly stocked website.  No, that was not the case.  Although I'm quite certain you would have been irresistibly drawn to my site, I started writing about what drew me instead.

This became a pondering moment for me.  Do I maintain a separation of church and state with my blog? That is to say, do I post about SEO, photo-geeking, promotional paraphernalia, and other selectively chosen topics to embrace my photography company all whilst writing in a cheerleader-ish rhetoric hoping and withholding the full extent of my personal opinions?  Dare I share information or thoughts or rambling or concerns or nervousness or any other non-marketable trait on my own blog?

I wrote one post.  I wrote another post.  Then, I wrote one that I loosely tied to photography, but the real fervor behind the post had more to do with conquering life in general than it did with aperture settings. It was this one:  I reject your reality.  Though I believe I did a decent job in bringing the blog post back full-circle, you know, to a marketable point...  my voice was starting to come through.

I had more comments on this post, than any other I had written.  It didn't teach anything per-se, it didn't describe the tangible elements of design, nor SEO, nor even shared a photo from a shoot.  Yet, it somehow spoke to people.

This is what I want to do now.  Speak to people.  I have wanted to do that all along through photography and videography.  At times, I have been successful at it.  In a strange manner, it seems I have hid behind my photography and videography to do so.  There was a time (a long, long time ago) when I was quite literally- a motivational speaker.  With such a background, why has it even been a hesitation to do the same with words, here?

I can only assume that we, as visual artists, get used to out work "speaking" for us, such that we stop using our actual voice (in this case- writing) to speak for us as well.  It is almost as if the necessity of speaking (or writing) suggests that our work hasn't spoken loud enough.  Gasp!! I have to describe the feeling I was going for while shooting in black and white, soaking to the bone, in the freak Utah hail storm?!  That pain should have been clear!!

Yea, that pain is.  But the inspiration that might have been possible by just talking about why you even thought to do that shoot, or what complications happened, or why you chose to put cream in your coffee that day... also might have been well-received.

So, for the record, I drink my coffee black.