Recently, a local high school student contacted me for help writing a paper on a photographer.  I thought it would be nice to show a few of his interview questions and my answers.  I hope this helps with your paper!

Question:
What inspired you to be a photographer?

Answer:
I can’t tell you.  I just don’t know.  I just always wanted to be a photographer.

I can tell you what inspires me to continue to be a photographer, though.  It’s the little details in life, and the drive for perfection.  Once the love of image making gets you, all those little tiny details that you notice around you have to become perfect within an image.  I push myself every day to make them perfect.  Unfortunately, I failed at that today.  So I’ll have to try again tomorrow, and then the next day, and so on.  It will never end.  I’ll always be a photographer.

Question:
Did you know you wanted to be a photographer when you first picked up a camera?

Answer:
I can’t remember the first time I picked up a camera.  I don’t really have some special story about my Dad giving me a camera for my birthday and something magical happened and 20 years later I’m a photographer.  It didn’t work that way.  My Dad did give me my first camera, though.  It was a Canon F-tb with a film crank that didn’t quite work right.

Question:
When did you sell your first piece and how did it feel?

Answer:
I can’t really remember that one either.  It was probably sometime in college.  I could really care less about print sales, honestly.  As a photographer, I have so many other sources of potential income that I’m more interested in people seeing my work regardless if they every buy a piece.  (Any gallerist interested in showing my work should disregard what I’m saying here.)  My point is, you should make work for yourself first and worry about finding a buyer later.  For example, many photographers here in Sonoma County photograph vineyards because that’s what sells here.  This may be a good business strategy, but not a good image-making strategy.  You have to decide if you want to make art or a product.

Question:
What advice would you give me when taking photos?

Answer:
Get the technical side of photography down pat.  F-stops, shutter speeds, and the “how” of taking photos should become second nature to you.  Once it is, then you can free you mind for more important things like what you are photographing and why.  Most viewers really aren’t going to care how you shot something or with what camera.  They want to be compelled to look based on what is in the image and how its presented.

You should continually look at the work of other photographers.  Be inspired by something.  For example, when you are studying photography, read about a photographer’s ideas instead of his or her gear.  Mediocre photographers will always talk about how much they’re into their cameras instead of how much they’re into what they’re photographing.  Wouldn’t it be silly to see painters spending as much time talking about how awesome the latest paintbrush is, as photographers talk about how awesome the latest Canon 5D Mark-whatever is?  I guess what I’m saying is that brain cells beat megapixels any day.  Act on your inspirations!

Question:
What do you like taking photos of more?  People, places, nature, etc.

Answer:
I think that I enjoy working with all of those things at the same time.  Typically, when I am taking pictures it’s to tell a story of some sort or to investigate an idea. In that way, I am usually photographing a myriad of different subject matter, and then through sequencing and editing, use those images to translate an idea or story visually. The people in my work should inform the viewer about the place, and vice versa.  At least, that the idea.  Lately, my personal work has portrayed many objects within the landscape to either act as a surrogate for a person or to conjure memory or emotion.  Therefore, you aren’t seeing many people in much of my most recent projects.