Why do I make photographs?

Dawn - Jubilee Park

This is a question that has just come to me - why do I make photographs or images or prints or what the hell you wish to call them?  For me it starts with a feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I see something, hear a sound read an article and I am gone.   Something fires in my brain, a stray neuron; a synaptic collision and bang.   This satisfaction doesn't always come with the actual capture but by the time that I have produced the photograph I feel it - a strange warmth as I look on what I have produced.  This changes overtime but I still feel it about most of my work. 

Whilst writing that last paragraph I became aware that I didn't want to use the image to describe what I produce. I am instinctively wary of the word image, although it is a perfect description of what I produce it doesn't feel right.  I am a photographer not an imager, which sounds like someone who works at Disney.   I digress.  

The spark, the infusion of a spirt that makes me make photographs is something that it is impossible to quantify, yet it is there.  I have just been watching the movie Broadcast News and bang I am off.  Something connected and I want to produce a photograph but I don't know of what and why.  I am thinking about flash photography at the moment and yet this is not what I want to produce.  I sometimes envy the professional photographer who has a brief and can let loose his or her creative juices on a set goal.  Me I have no such luxury or constraint.  I can produce what I want and mostly when I want and this is fine but sometimes it would be nice to have a small idea to illustrate rather than some grandiose thought, something that you know you won't produce and yet will no doubt lead to something that you will.

So what is the answer - why do I make photographs?  Well put to put it simply I do so because I love doing it.  Nothing more nor less.  I wish I could draw well enough to satisfy this urge but I can't or am not willing to put the hours into improve my meagre talent.  No I photograph and love it.  And that is the best answer to the question I can come up with.

I am not sure where that came from nor whether it makes much sense but I feel better having written it than before.  I doubt whether few will read it and of them if any will understand what I am saying.  Still it felt good writing it and after all, that is the purpose of blogging.