Cuba: Eat. Sleep. Shoot.
I own, and proudly wear, a T-shirt, that reads, “Eat. Sleep. Shoot”.
No joke, it’s exactly who I am and how I live my life. Click. Click again.
I’m not, by any stretch, and to my own admission, the most balanced kid on the block. Never have been.
It’s all or nothing for me. I have no dimmer switch. I’m full-throttle, pedal-to-the-metal when it comes to my beloved photography.
It’s not only how I’m wired, it’s also, in equal measure, the accumulation of all the lifelong choices I’ve made in photography.
Since 1975, gratefully and appreciably, I’m still obsessed with photography.
And, without a doubt, what I am most proud of, is not owning and operating a successful photographic business but living and celebrating a photography life.
Photography is my life, inside and out, through and through. Click.
The reason that I am single, often cash-stretched for the myriad of projects I want to initiate, and stretched to the limits of my ability and schedule, is not at all because I couldn’t change these life balances and realities. I surely could.
But to change them, would come at a cost to my life of art and heart.
And at this point, in the autumn of my life and career, what I put on my walls is more important to me than what I put in my wallet.
Additionally, the emotional fulfillment I get from my craft seems to supersede my investment in fanning the flames of relationship volatility.
I could be kidding myself. But I don’t think so.
It’s not that I can’t do other things well. I can. It’s just that I choose not to.
I wake up and go to bed thinking about some aspects of photography-capture, editing, sharing, publishing, printing, creating, seeing, the list goes on.
Many people, who don’t know me well, tend to be envious of my passion and exotic life. Fair enough. Looking from the outside, I have lived an enviable life.
But the truth of the matter is, if you ever joined me, on any kind of overseas, photographic adventure, you would likely be bored out of your mind with my company.
Because my company, right or wrong, good or bad, is photography. Ouch. Sorry.
I was such a slacker in High-School because I was lost, more spellbound by fantasies of flight than the realities of right.
Once I found my raison d’etre (reason for being), I traded in my idleness for passion, purpose, and poetry. Click.
In Cuba, me and my expert photo guides, Wilbur and Yirka ( adorable husband and wife couple), every day, without exceptions, would be on the street, shooting, by 9.00 am and we would go, almost non-stop, until around 4.00 pm.
It was glorious. And fun too. Ahhhhh.
But even after a long day of emotional shooting and walking, 5-7 miles a day, as a threesome, I insisted on spending the last few hours of each day, alone, shooting more.
Why? Because I could? Because I had to? Because I wanted to? Because I am and will always be, at heart, an introverted, wayfaring, light-chasing photographer.
When you are driven and motivated like I am in photography, time, responsibility, obligations, schedules, and constraints, seem superfluous and irrelevant.
I eat. I sleep. I shoot. Life goes on.
Click
Jack
