About
In case you can’t read my handwritting here is what I wrote above:
A Road Not Taken
A Road Not Taken is about my future. It is about the unknown and wonderful future I imagine and hope for myself. I am a photographer (person) – the type who likes to create images rather than look for things worthy of their snapshot in time. I have found that when I put my efforts towards creating I am happier with the results than if I only stand back and observe the world as it unfolds before me. A core part of who I am is that of a creator.
Towards that end, A Road Not Taken is not just about my imagined future; it is about my efforts at a self-created one. A scary proposition, because if I fail to reach my goals, regardless of the process, I will have to take ownership over those results. But, I am not afraid. I have been at the bottom before and know what it feels like; I survived it, dug myself out of it, and can survive future failures.
There is a liberating realization at the bottom. When you have nothing left – you have nothing left to lose. That thought gives you the freedom to build whatever type of future you can dream for yourself. And in my case – I want to try.
Out of some mental ashes, photography became my way to build a life for myself. I love the challenge of it. It is an extremely hard way to make a living, at least for me, but I love the layers of it – it is not just about the final images, it is about all the people and places involved to pull off a final vision. It is about a process.
I am at the point in my life now where I can’t really imagine any other career for myself. It is as if this was a predetermined road for me. So, I do what I can to keep bread on the table within the world of my lens.
That being said, I want and need more for my future career and myself. I have goals. Big goals. Ultimately, A Road Not Taken is about a single goal – getting hired to shoot for my top three clients (making a living working on things I enjoy). This is a space for me to write about my process in trying to reach that goal.
It is also about something else, something deeper, and something that does actually scare me (not as much anymore) – it is a place for me to write. I have known for a long time I have things to say that haven’t come out yet. They are things that can’t be said through my photographs, sculptures, paintings, or in any other way but by me simply writing them down. I have circled around writing for years. But haven’t been able to own that part of me.
In college I literally wrote thousands of pages for papers, essays, legal documents – homework assignments – and that seemed fine because I wasn’t letting myself out of the cage. I was following instructions and answering questions, but I wasn’t being truly myself. For a period of six years in my life I wrote everyday. I kept a journal of everything I did each day, but never included any other thoughts about the things I did. My journaling was nothing more and nothing less then a log of my daily events.
I am now ready to own what I was afraid of in the past. A Road Not Taken is also a place for me to let go – and to write out of me, that which cannot be seen in my photographs.
I once worked for a year as an apprentice to a great bronze sculptor. He was a soft-spoken person and a deep thinker. He use to say to me from time to time that sometimes in life there are things that build up inside you – that maybe you are not ready to face yet, but will not go away; they build up like a rising tide, a wave – Until one day the wave washes over you, pushing its way out. And you are left to deal with the flood that follows.
The ocean inside of me is ready to come out. The wave has arrived. A Road Not Taken is the flood that follows. (And it still is.)
In Truth,
Clark Patrick – September 2009 (Updated: April 2011)