I’ve spent a large part of the evening messing about with more of the photos from Dublin[1]. Mostly, I’ve spent the time kicking myself as I’ve come away from almost all of them thinking “If only I hadn’t cocked this detail or that detail up that’d be a really good shot”. One of them, I blew almost completely but I liked the whole idea far too much to abandon it. Had I the time and resources, I’d go back and re-shoot it, but I don’t so I shall put it on-line botched as it it, thus destroying what tiny shreds of photographic credibility I have.

Anyway, the point of this isn’t that I’m bad, it’s a) that I had a really relaxing and pleasant evening, and b) I’m struck (and pleasantly surprised) by how much more I’m shooting to capture an idea. Sometimes the idea is an abstract notion, sometimes it’s just a pretty image, but my shots are getting much more constructed. (And correspondingly more heavily post processed.) It feels like I’m actually starting to evolve something of a style[2]. Slowly, very bloody slowly, but I can see it moving on. At the moment, I’m at the stage of regurgitating my influences, trying for effect X or Y that I’ve seen other photographers produce, and sometimes I get there, and sometimes I don’t, but I feel like I’m starting to make progress again. Like I felt about writing nine or ten years back – I knew I hadn’t got to my own style yet, but I had some sense of where it would wind up. It’s the first time I’ve really felt like that about photography. Which isn’t to say I haven’t enjoyed it up to now, or anything, because god knows, there’s nothing like it, just that one of my problems was that I felt like I had no style or voice of my own. I still don’t think I have, but at least now, I feel like I know what direction I’m heading in – like I’ll get there at some point.

Which is nice.

[1] Yes, I know I’ve been back a week. I’m not fast, OK?
[2] “Oooh look, blue neon lights!” does not count as a style.