You'll often see lots of chatter on photography websites, forums, etc, about finding your "Vision". What does that mean? Often it means if you take someone's workshop and follow their recipe you'll achieve Photographic Nirvana in the form of Your Vision. Hmmm.
I believe we all have a Vision, but I'm not sure it's something you can actively cultivate. Nor do I believe it's something you should obsess over. I think one's photographic vision is just a manifestation of who you are. It comes from your life experience, your likes and dislikes, where you've been and where you want to go. At some level every photograph is a self portrait. Your images are partly a reflection of who you are. That's why a group of photographers can photograph the same subject and all come away with different images. We all bring different experiences to everything we do. Someone once asked the photographer Jay Maisel how to make his images more interesting. Jay responded; become a more interesting person. On the surface that may seem like a flippant response from a cynical New Yorker (which he is) but I think there's some truth to it. Read lots of good novels and they will eventually inform your photography. After you've made lots of photographs over the years you can look back and probably find common threads running though your images. You may see a common approach to your subject matter. Voila, you've found your Vision.
So don't obsess over this. Just make photographs.
More next week.
-A