Did you ever stop to think that maybe you became a photographer for a reason that you never really thought of before?

For as long as I can remember I've been in love with the process of writing. One of my early heros was Vladimir Nabokov. He wrote beautiful sentences. He wrote wonderfully visual descriptions. And he wrote with an incredible ear for narrative. Many years ago I got a degree in English Literature from the University of Texas at Austin and started a career as a copywriter in the advertising industry. Sometime in the whole mess of becoming a real, dues paying, adult I got seduced by the promise of photography= that one could make art with less fuss and commitment.

Even though I consider myself to be a "middle of the road" photographer I've been able to make a living at it for a variety of reasons. Early on there were enough barriers to entry in the field so that you actually had to know what you were doing and how you were going to do it to make photographs. I picked up enough marketing smarts early on to be able to sell the sizzle instead of the dektol. I made enough friends in the business who needed fairly straightforward work from a reliable source and I rode the reliability horse for years without ever falling off.

But as I put my fourth book for Amherst Media in the Fedex last Thurs and the went out to celebrate over margharitas with Belinda it finally dawned on me what the allure is for me. It's note taking at its most immediate. Looking back over fascinating trips to Russia or Maui it's not the photographs I want to share when I get back home, it's the stories. I spent a week in Monte Carlo several years ago and I don't think any of my friends saw any of my photos. I sent what I needed to over to the client and got well paid but for me the thrill was in sharing the stories. I was the first American to set foot in the Alexander Palace in Pushkin, Russia a while back but I would rather regale my friends with stories about sneaking off to use the Czar's toilet than wave prints of the Catherine Palace Golden Ballroom in my friend's faces.

I suspect many of us were lured into photography for reasons that have never been clear to us. It was interesting to have this epiphany. Now I see the interconnection between the two crafts; writing and photographing. It's clearer to me than every before. It's all about the storytelling.

The image above is from one of the last Metro stations in Paris to still have wooden slat escalators. It was taken back in the mid 1990's with an old M3 and a 50mm. Great gear for preserving the feel of history and the flow of life.

I think it's important to shoot for yourself.

Photographers shoot lots of stuff for other people and I think we get confused about the difference between what we create for an intended audience and what we should create for our more immediate audience: ourselves. If I were a psychology major I'm sure I could explain why the emotional need to satisfy others sometimes dominates, even in contradiction to our own best interests, our need to truly express our personal vision. Even if the result doesn't make people stand up and cheer it should cheer our own sense of discovery and playfulness.

I'm sure I attach far too much value to the criticism of others. It might be nice to work in seclusion for a spell. Anyway, I shot the above portrait of my dear friend, Renae, a few years back and I printed this because it seemed to me to be a part of Renae that spoke to her insouciance. It symbolized the part of our relationship that made her raise an eyebrow occasionally when I spoke about things I really didn't know much about. It took a commitment to shoot for yourself in the days of film. There was a financial cost to every frame. And though I wish I could go back in time and have all the money back that I spent on coffee and alcohol and pastries I don't regret any of the money I spent on film, processing and printing.

I just finished a few big projects and now I think I'll spend a week shooting just for myself.

Too Hot to Shoot Anywhere but at the pool.

It's Summer in Austin with a vengence. My car thermometer reads 114(f) on the pavement and it's 103(f) in the shade. My favorite art director is fleeing to Scotland and leaving me to roast. So I headed to the pool and caught up with my son, Ben. I've been finishing up a book about lighting instruments and couldn't find the image I did of him last year at the pool. We needed to redo it today.

He was as cooperative as I have any right to expect from a teenager.

I was using my favorite outdoor flash camera, the Canon G10. It was connected with a good old fashioned sync cord to the Profoto 600b battery powered unit and the head was spitting photons into a 40 inch white umbrella. All good clean fun. While I only needed to sync at 1/500th you can go all the way to 1/2000th of a second if you use a non-dedicated flash. That's pretty cool.

Stay cool wherever you are.

Best, Kirk

I love writing books almost as much as I love being finished with them.

Time is ticking away and I'm spending more and more time in the office trying to read what I've written and write more of what I read that didn't make sense the first time. What a weird sentence. In case you didn't know I started writing books about photography a couple of years ago.

You'd think it's pretty simple because you are ostensibly writing about what you know but it's not that simple. Just because you know it you don't know where a reader who is coming from a totally different background will feel comfortable stepping in and easing into the flow of words and theories.

How do you presume what your audience knows? More importantly, how do you presume to know what they'd like to know? I think it's a sticky thing because if you write at one level to hit someone who is a complete novice you'll alienate everyone else and no one but tyros will ever read your stuff again.

So, here I am, a week away from deadline still adding information to a book that I thought would be a slam dunk. It's an overview of all the cool types of lighting equipment that photographers might want to try their hands at over the course of their explorations. But here's the issue: Some stuff seems really cool to the Magellans of the world but a lot of the world is made up of good, solid Burghers who just want to know how all the other pros do it.

At some point I gave up guessing and just started writing about the stuff that I'm interested in. Last week I was getting worried but this week I'm guardedly optimistic. I've finished my little sections about: Lighting with your laptop screens. Fun with florescence. Why constant light is my constant companion. Casting darker nets. And much more.

One way or another it goes into the Fedex box at the end of the week and then my brain shuts down and deals with only primordial stuff. Like actual photography. And boy I am long past due to walk around with no agenda and a camera in my hand.

Don't know how the big time guys with big time schedules do it (the Joe McNally's and Scott Kelbey's of the photo/writer world) but I presume the word for it in the publishing world is: Ghostwriters. (Don't take that too seriously! I'm sure Joe and Scott write their own stuff. I just have to say they've got more energy than the rest of us!).

On another note, I can't make sense of how people buy books. I am thrilled that they are still rushing to buy my first book, Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Location Photography, but I can't understand why the second book, the one on studio lighting, isn't beating the crap out of the first book. I think the second one is just great.

Since this is the web and we can do tons of good research here I'd like to hear from people who've read both of the first two books to better understand the appeal of the first over the second from something other than a proud parent's point of view.

Finally, I'm letting everyone know that I've been selling off all but my essential Nikon Stuff and I've started to buy some Olympus gear. Reason? I love their optics. Two lenses, the 12-60mm and the 50-200mm would suit me for 99% of what I shoot. And wow! have you played with an E-30 body? Really, really nice. It's about time someone made a fun to shoot body with good IS built in.

Keeping the D700 and a range from 18 to 300. Just about everything else goes.

No. I won't be letting go of the 50mm 1.1.2