When we think of being a photographer we usually think of the crouched upper body of an artist as they peer through a tiny hole in a box rather than look up and directly at whatever is in front of them. We picture them standing over a vista, directing a model, in the streets capturing life, society and architecture. We imagine them in darkrooms with red lights and tongs in hand dunking white paper into trays (well, some of us still do). But we rarely think of them spending hours upon hours staring at a big screen surrounded by drives and scrolling endlessly through frames, eyebrows knit together as a multitude of apps are crashing or bugging out, struggling with miss-managed naming systems and malfunctioning back up systems and watching endless YouTube videos about better ways to do this thing called photography. However, that is most of us who carry the moniker “photographer” these days. So much of it is staring at a big silver box with no one on the other side.

I declared the title Photographer in 2007 but I had been with camera in hand to some degree already for 18 years. That’s mind boggling. I don’t think I even realized that at the time of the proclamation into my journal “ I am a photographer now”. But in fact I already had photography minor in my undergraduate studies, gone on to graduate school in photography, taught photography and film as an instructor at an art college in San Francisco and been published in a book of photographers for my reportage work in the 90’s.

Yet somehow, in 2006, I still had not stepped into professional work. I loved photography growing up, studied masters like Stieglitz, Avedon, Brassai, Newton and Mapplethorpe. I felt called to it, lost in it but always there was another timeline running in the background of becoming a director and telling longer format stories. My major in undergrad was filmmaking. At the time, and because of the structure of school majors and minors, I saw them as separate things rather than one thing. It would take years to knit the two together to a single frame or a series or to flip the power of a single image with moving subjects to tell stories.

How I came to choose photography over film or anything else is rather underwhelming if I’m being honest, a simple night of writing, eliminating and pragmatic self auditing, although it was liberating and set me off on an adventure of 17 more years and counting of holding a camera and business card with the word “photographer” printed under my name.

How I have lived up to and fallen short of that word “photographer” has me up in the wee hours of the morning lately. And so here I am, taking inventory of, reviewing how and confessing about being a photographer. Bringing forth the question what does this title mean to me now?

As with everything it doesn’t start with me but rather with my parents. My father had a passion for photography and took it on as his creative practice when I was a child. He built a darkroom in our second bathroom, worked with an Olympus system and an old 4x5 Toyoview . He was making portraits and environmental studies as long as I can remember. My mother, an artist by any medium near her (but mostly paint and pen) was also known to be comfortable holding a camera and she was also a great source of art history. Between the two I knew the names of the great painters, sculptors, photographers, directors and musicians at an early age. Their passion for art laid a yellow brick road I would follow for the rest of my life. As did their self doubts, perfectionisms and distractions but that’s for therapy tomorrow.

It’s hard to look back and honor what was for some of us. That comes with time. The work of a photographer, as Henry Cartier Bresson pointed out, is to capture the defining moment. So reviewing one’s career as an artist of moments captured can be a poignant metaphor for recognizing the many moments of life one failed to capture at all or even notice. That can be a deep psychological pain point for some of us. But it’s an incredible life lesson and I think mastering the roll of photographer is both witnessing your ability to see and celebrating it as well as acknowledging the missed moments and your inability to see clearly at certain times. In other words, it’s truly humbling to be a photographer.

Photography truly is a spiritual practice. It is studying how you view the world. It is practicing quieting the ego and showing up as the mirror. It is refining the process of presence with another, but also with self. Above all photography is the love of light. And dark.

On the moments missed by my eye and lens I say this, I’m sorry. I hope another of my clan caught you and saw you for what you really were. To the moments ahead of me, I say, many of you I will be missed but I challenge my self to see you all with delight and a quick trigger finger.