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There is a mysterious viewer of the channel who, every so often sends me an email.
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Usually, they are short and to the point but they always have a single purpose
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He keeps telling me to relax and have fun.
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The photographer in question is a guy called Chris Cuffaro who has photographed music stars for decades now - think people like George Michael, Michael Hutchence along with bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

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The most recent email that I received from him came last week, and it couldn't have come at a better time for me. Especially given that I'm feeling frustrated about photography at the moment.

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As some of you might be aware I've had some issues with YouTube and censorship on a few of the videos that I've been uploading recently. There's also been what seems to be a flood of content that is focused heavily on gear, sharpness, ISO, and things of that nature
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So to have Chris reach out and remind me to just relax and not be so serious about photography was a welcome antidote to what I'd been feeling.​
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He encouraged me to remember why I took photographs in the first place.

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​It seems such as simple statement and yet it's easy to forget.​
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I like to look at photographs to think about how they were made, but that can feel a little sterile if one isn’t careful. Over analyzing, rather than simply enjoying.
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I guess the roots of this come from my initial introduction to photography through magazines like Practical Photography.
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In the pages of these magazines, there were people talking in somewhat serious terms about technical things about cameras and lenses.
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Then when I went to photo school, the focus was very much on technical proficiency, learning first and foremost the alchemy of photography. Initially, there was a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things.
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But then we went on a trip where all the photo schools in South Africa got together at the foot of the Drakensberg mountains, for a weekend of photography and education.

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Of course, being art students, what we ended up with was a weekend of drinking, photography, and then a little bit more drinking

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However, there was a guest photographer there, who had come up from Rhodes University in Grahamstown to talk to us about his images.

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As he stood up there on the stage talking about sleeping in open graves and driving around the dusty back roads of South Africa taking photographs of whatever tickled his fancy, a whole new way of looking at photography was being shown to me.
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This is my first introduction to Obie Oberholzer, whom I'm very happy to say is going to be one of the guest photographers on the cohort I'm running which starts on the 10th of September. If you haven't checked it out already go and look at the cohort pages as there are only four spaces left.​
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Obie is a photographer who I feel best sums up this idea about having fun with your photographs. He is somebody who knows the technical side of things - he was a lecturer for many years and has taught thousands of photographers. But also the creative spirit.
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When I look at his images I can see the technical aspects that he's used to create them, but those are easy to learn. If you want to learn how to paint with light I could teach you that in one evening, it's not difficult.
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What is difficult and takes time to grasp, is the idea that it's okay to just try something out and see what happens. To throw the image that you have in your mind to the randomness of the Photographic process

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There is one image in particular that I really enjoy. It’s a family sitting around a table where Obie has taken his flash gun and has popped in flashes to illuminate various members of the family. He’s probably said to them, look I want you just all to stand still and look at the camera. But what happened is that you could see one of the little boys at the table kept looking around at Obie every time the flash popped. A ghost of this child's expression is captured on film.
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And as these were all taken on film Obie wouldn't know what the result would look like until the film came back from the processes.
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How many of us would have looked at that image and gone “oh it's a mistake the little boy has ruined the idea I was going for”?
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Photographers like Chris and Obie have very much connected with the idea that they don't worry so much about images being technically proficient, or conforming to various rules about composition and the like.
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They take photographs because it's fun.

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Everyone expresses that idea of fun in different ways, but what you do see are photographers who have a deep love and a passion for simply creating images. Of playing with the alchemy of photography, of just enjoying pressing the shutter and seeing what happens
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I'm extremely pleased that Obie has agreed to talk with the upcoming cohort about his experiences with photography. That first talk he gave changed my ideas about photography and made me feel more liberated in taking images that didn't necessarily conform to what was right or wrong. I hope it will have the same impact on you.
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As I mentioned there are only four spaces left in the upcoming cohort so if you would like to secure one of them for yourself click on this link here​
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This weekend as you are out there either taking photographs or thinking about photographs take a moment to remember the excitement that you first felt when you picked up a camera and channel some of that into your photos.
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Alex