Year Begin Review…
Leading up to this point, I haven’t really felt “proud” of a lot of the work I’ve done over the last couple of years. I have felt like there has been a road block. My skills haven’t seemed to align with my vision for what I am creating. I’ve never been able to pin point what exactly it is that keeps me from enjoying the end results. It’s like I shoot and shoot to “my best” abilities and still absolutely loath the end results. So, I just quit looking at them.
I took a good deal of time off from shooting much at all. I would get out with the camera every once in a while but wouldn’t press the shutter. Then, when i got home and imported the couple of frames into the computer, I hated everything. Composition was terrible. Lighting was garbage. Technique wasn’t right. i couldn’t get the colors to look “correct”. You name it, i didn’t care for it. So the images just sat on hard drives. the memories were forgotten about, and I went on my way,
That all started back in 2023. That was the year that I traveled more than any other point in my life. Chicago. Port Aransas. Arkansas. Big Bend. Even a trip through Colorado to Montana including Yellowstone and Grand Teton. I was all over, in some of the most beautiful places around here. I would always take the camera equipment and shoot all that I could. Images that at the time I thought I was going to love. However, they never lived up to my expectations. So I would just shoot less and less as time went on. The down side to that, the less i was happy with my work, the less i was happy with life in general.
Photography has been therapeutic for me since I first started back in 2017. Its helped me get through some of the hardest, most transformative years of my life. From deaths, relationships ending, moving around, covid, isolation, and even the great times like seeing beautiful places and spending time with family and friends. Photography has helped me process it all. So not liking the work I made during the year of seemingly great experiences was difficult.
I didn’t like any of the work from 2023 so I changed processes and started into film. The initial excitement took a few rolls to wear off, but it of course did. Then it was moving on to developing all my film and getting into medium format. Diving into as much as I possibly could learn. Not seeing the work for weeks or months was no different than when i would shoot, immediately hate everything and just leaving it on memory cards. This way at least I didn’t see them and feel disgust… immediately anyways.
I started to acquire books form photographers that I have enjoyed for years. There has been 3 books that have struck a lot of inspiration: A Question of Color by Joel Meyerowitz, Surveyor by Matt Day, and Human Nature by James Popsys. A couple of honorable mentions that have started to evolve my techniques is Quiet Light by John Sexton as well as the plethora of great information in Shoot Film Like a Boss’s YouTube videos. I may have had a problem with my own work, but that never stopped me from learning and looking for inspiration from amazing artists.
Now were here in 2025. I’ve learned a lot of techniques, methods and formats for shooting, and what the end results as a whole could look like. This is the year that i have finally decided to put it all together. Come hell or high water, I WILL print a book of some fashion with some of my work. I have started to organize all the film I have shot in the last year into smaller projects that have potential for a book. With that, I started to go back through all the work I shot before last year as well. My entire catalog as of writing this is 82,134 photos. That’s everything from my first camera (that hasn’t been corrupted) to the last couple of rolls that I scanned. There is still work that needs to be developed, as well as, a couple of rolls hanging up that still need to be scanned. It’s going to take some time to go through it all and find the “keepers” but thats whats ahead.
One thing that has caught my attention is the fact that I don’t hate everything any more. There are actually a few decent shots in there. They took a little bit of polishing but not hours of editing like I would do in the past. Color, contrast, sharpen, export. Simple as that. Max of five minutes per photo. In about an hour of going through 2023 and the little digital I shot in 2024, I have found around 35 photos that I past on before because they weren’t “good enough”. So what’s changed?
I believe a more positive state of mind has a lot to do with it. Being in that depressed state just made me not enjoy anything that I once had. Everything was a “chore”. Now with it slowly dissipating and a lot of forcing myself off the couch and onto the computer or doing actual chores, I am beginning to see work in a new light. I used to always want my images to stand on their own. Never looking for a collection but for a grand print. Its like looking at all the ingredients for cookies and expecting them to be delicious on their own. That’s not always how this art form works. I have started to discover that it’s okay for it to take several images to convey the point instead of just one. It’s okay that not every photo is meant to be printed large above the mantel. Some of this work just needs a smaller platform. It’s not extravagant. It’s just art. Beautiful in it’s own way. It’s just a matter of finding the correct way of presenting it.
While I doubt I ever showcase all the work I have created, I do feel like it is time to really start getting it out into the world. You should start to see albums on this site, photos attached to these posts as well as more on instagram. Just please bear with me while i figure out how to structure it all. I just have this unshakable feeling that I have to start getting all of this work out and sharing my experiences in the making of it. I hope you enjoy the work to come and continue to follow. If you want to follow it a little closer be sure to sign up for email updates for when there is more posted and follow the instagram page. Also, leave a comment if there is anything you would like to start seeing.
Thanks for reading and be sure to click the picture below to check out the collection of the work mentioned.
-Brock
My little man, Rascal, back in 2017. He was my best friend while I had mine. He unfortunately left us in 2020 due to severe back problems. He will always hold a special place in my heart.