I’ve worked as a truck tire salesman, a club DJ, a graphic designer, a talent agent, a record store manager, and a technology instructor at Apple. Thirty years experience as a creative, including art direction, graphic design, printing, publishing, photography, and video production. Twenty years live performance and presentation experience, including presentation preparation and coaching, event MC and coordination, twenty years as a club and college radio DJ.
Everything is teaching. Teaching is everything.
There are those times, those energizing moments, when you know you’ve made someone’s life better. Perhaps the change you’ve inspired is a small one, but you know it’s something your audience will use often, and it will make their day a little better every single time. It might be a clearer way to reach a destination, an easier way to absorb important information … perhaps a keyboard shortcut in their favorite software title, or a strategy for searching with Google, even a different approach to their smart phone camera … but, in every case, it’s a bit of information they can use right now. The effect is immediate and persistent.
Guest lecturer at the University of Washington, Digital Imaging Workshops (students and faculty), Zoology Department. Guest lecturer at Buffalo State University, Typography for Design Students.
Best of all, and this is the ultimate achievement, you may have changed the way they think about the next obstacle they encounter. You may have taught them to learn in a different way, to suss out a solution on their own, without asking for help. They’ll feel good about themselves. I can think of little more rewarding than knowing I’ve helped them get there, even (or, perhaps, especially) if they don’t see or remember my role in the whole thing.
A Passion for Social Documentary
In the motion picture industry, a typical running time for a good comedy is 90 minutes, a drama often reaches two hours, and an “epic” may well exceed the three-hour mark. Most social documentary — or, street photography — images are captured at 1/250th of a second; that’s some pretty economical storytelling.
“I pursue street photography because it is difficult, because it makes me uncomfortable, and because we will never see or experience these moments again.”
Street photography is a challenging discipline. The photographer has little control over the action, composition, lighting … but those aren’t the biggest challenges. Many photographers–even experienced professionals–find capturing unsolicited candid images of strangers intimidating. Fear is an ever-present companion. Fear of not getting the shot. Fear of wasting time and effort. Fear of creating boring images. But, above all else, fear of confrontation.
Fighting through the fear is important because street photography is important. Documenting daily life in photos has value. Capturing people in unposed, authentic, unguarded moments preserves our shared history. Genuine gestures, emotions, and interactions lacking pretense or posing … these are worth recording in photos. Every moment left unpreserved is largely lost to us, imperfectly stored in flawed, fickle and affected memory.
So, I pursue street photography because it is difficult, because it makes me uncomfortable, and because we will never see or experience these moments again.
RBKnight Creative 