The approach
There's a saying that the journey is more important than the destination. Not without reason. As we go on an unfamiliar journey there’s much to see and experience. Even a familiar place offers the opportunity to see what’s known in greater detail.
This is the approach to Petit Trianon at Chateau de Versailles. Grand Trianon and Chateau de Versailles all have beautiful approaches. So too do palaces and countless country houses all over the world. On Time Team, Stewart Ainsworth discovered a stretch of Watling Street running through Greenwich Park. He realised that, in Roman times, by taking this road you'd crest a hill and see the temple complex they were investigating straight ahead.
Places like this have an approach to draw attention to the fact that, when we visit them, we're visiting an elevated space. A place apart. The heart beats a little faster. The anticipation grows. What will happen?
However, to approach something is to draw near to it and that can be a skill set, an ethic or a standard. It can be the standard for being a competent professional in our field. As we develop in our professions, it's easy to forget what it is to be at an earlier point in the approach. The person I was when I first committed to being a DAM professional seems far away from who I am now. That person had all the passion in the world for DAM, but needed straightening out to achieve a professional standard. Now, I feel more like a veteran, like someone who's been through a few battles and gained valuable experience… and some scars. With that journey to becoming a veteran we inevitably lose innocence. DAM will never again be so exciting to me as it was when I was a student who needed straightening out. For while the lesson was uncomfortable in the moment, I took it to heart without taking it personally and so all the potential of the field opened up before me.
To find a new hobby or profession, then, is to rediscover innocent joy in something and rediscover potential for growth. Hobbies or professions where we can see a more direct and immediate gain or improvement from our input or the lessons we’ve taken inevitably have a particular appeal.
This is why the approach above to Petit Trianon is significant to me. I started taking photography more seriously in October 2020 when I bought my Fuji XF10. An entry level camera, it was the perfect introduction to a more serious world. But my skills reached a point where they were no longer developing. It was receiving a new straightening out by understanding the level of meaning that photography has for that led to a new commitment to approach the standard of professional photography. Making this commitment has opened up the potential of photography again with the joy of discovering I have a whole new set of skills to develop.
And already by studying photography, especially composition and depth of field, I can see where my photography of just a few weeks ago was limited. In exploring Lightroom, I’ve started to learn how to release the potential of each photo. In doing that, I’ve discovered that I have a certain style of photography: that I want to make something of the sky rather than crop it out. If there are clouds, then it's possible to draw them out further. But even if it’s a completely clear sky, the light can still be gradiated across the image.
This is more than the early stages of the approach to the standard of professional photography. In DAM, the journey is so long, complex and ambiguous that it’s difficult to see any return on the investment and sacrifices made. But in photography I can draw shorter, and more direct, connections between what I learn and what I’m able to do with it.
Perhaps above all it’s the recovery of innocent joy in something that requires skill, but also offers immediate understanding of how my skills improve as I invest time in them.