Just renewed my inLiquid membership and realized that a year had come and gone since I was first juried and accepted as an inLiquid artist. It made me think about all that has happened since that time … I had a couple of shows and prepared for an upcoming one in Lisbon, taught my darkroom workshop and my two courses at the Center for Learning in Retirement for two semesters, met with my Photo Chat group during our monthly Sunday get-togethers over coffee, led a number of photo walks, visited a number of great museum exhibits, and even made some good photographs.

Now that I think about it, that’s a lot, given everything else I have going on in my life. Fact is, that even though I got all of this done there’s so much I more wanted to accomplish that I didn’t. Why? Because I got caught up in a lot of time and brain wasters outside of photography and at its edges that just didn’t matter … taking precious time away from creative opportunities that do matter.

Sound familiar? Have you fallen into this trap? When it comes right down to it, wasting time … and mental energy … on non-essential things that don’t matter and are counterproductive to your overall and creative wellbeing is not a good thing. I know this now because in retrospect I’ve done a lot of it!

In the end there’s only so much time we have, so I want to do something really creative … make more time for meaningful photographs. And I’m not waiting to January 1^st! No! I’ve decided to take stock of all this right now, and work to clear away all the non-worthwhile activity and focus on what is important to me. So should you.

This past week I took my two photography classes from Delaware Valley University’s Center for Learning in Retirement to see a small but meaningful social documentary exhibit at the James A. Michener Art Museum here in Doylestown. There always seems to be a great photography exhibit at the Michener during the semester so it really works out well for what I want accomplish, which is to show the students the many photographic opportunities that surround them.

A Time to Break Silence: Pictures of Social Change is being presented to coincide with the 50th anniversary Martin Luther King’s famous speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” and includes striking black and white photographs made primarily during the 1960s. Civil rights, anti-war and anti-nuclear protest, racist acts and other signs of that turbulent time. Almost all the photographs were made by two Bucks County based photographers, Edmund Eckstein and Jack Rosen. Prior to visiting the show I wasn’t familiar with either photographer’s work, which is sad. The work they produced was wonderful and important! One image made in a Sears department store shows rows of televisions displaying the news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination and a anguished young woman sitting in front with her head in her hands. Another particularly troubling and dramatic picture of a nighttime Klu Klux Klan cross burning refuses to fade from my memory.

I walked away from the exhibit thinking of the power and character of black and white film based images and their ability to capture raw emotion. The photographs also served as a strong reminder that in 50 years some things haven’t changed very much.

A Time to Break Silence: Pictures of Social Change Exhibit runs through February 4, 2018.

I have written a number of times about doing what really matters to you when it comes to your photography … no matter what others think or what is currently in vogue. I’ve also talked about passion a few times. In an entry concerning a successful photographic life, I mentioned that while listening to an interview of several very successful people, I learned that it’s essential to discover what you are passionate about doing, find out what you need to do in order to make it happen, and never settle for something less.

After an outing with my photo class the other day I started to think about this a little more. It’s incredibly exciting when you make a photograph you really care about. Believe me … when it happens you will know the feeling! Sure you can get lucky and stumble into an unplanned opportunity and come up with a keeper, but I think in order to make more photographs that move you – both when you trip the shutter and when your first see the image emerge in the developer – you need to really determine once and for all what you care about. What is it that truly excites you? What compels you? And what are you truly passionate about? Landscape, architecture, nature, portraits or the street – it doesn’t matter! Figure out what it is sooner rather than latter! Then search for it. If you’re driven and really care, you will soon discover very compelling subject matter right where you live … and more often! Great … now do the best job you can to capture its essence and make pictures that are truly yours!