It’s was the quickest of trips into Manhattan. My only excursion outside Brooklyn after nearly week here. My destination: a speciality foam and rubber shop on Canal Street know for mass retailing and the knockoff capital of the US. Not the most glamorous stop in a city filled with world-class attractions.
Inside the tattered storefront I found the owner faithfully running his shop for the last 42 years. He helped me find what I needed. We haggled over price per foot and as I was paying he said the most remarkable thing. Holding the specialty foam I had come for, he turned it over in his hand, looked me in the eye and surrounded by a sea of foam of every dimension, density and color simply said with the deepest conviction ” I love this foam. It’s one of my favorites”.
Outside on the cab ride back to Brooklyn this guys passion for foam of all things was frankly moving. It made me think about the passion we all need to sustain us in business and life. You are not going to make it over 40 years in the foam business or any other business for that matter without it. At least not very far. A half a century on Canal Street had not diminished his passion. Finding love and appreciation in one of the thousands of items surrounding him each day.
In world of photography it’s not much different. Passion certainly is a prerequisite to a career in this field, but it takes on another added role as well. It’s the driving force to why we create and it’s the source of our creative point of view.
Our creative drive comes directly from our passion for the subject and the medium. Infusing your point of view into a photograph is essentially leveraging your passion for a subject. Try shooting without it and your pictures will show little life or interest. They mostly certainly will not reflect your point of view.
I have a deep passion for visual images, but it’s the personal passion I have for my photography that is the source of my creative mojo. It’s the reason I bring the camera to my eye and the driver of my edit as I sit with a computer glowing at the end of the day. It drives my marketing decisions, my portfolio selections, and the enthusiasm I bring to every job. I would be lost without it and miserable in its absence.
What I found on Canal Street yesterday is a universal truth in life and business really. It can exist in a lifetime selling products in the heart of the city or in providing creative solutions to my clients one project at a time for the last thirty years. Passion drives the creative direction I follow, it holds my interest and desire and is responsible for the exhaustion I feel at the end of a long day on the road.
What passion drives your professional life? Understanding the answer to that question cuts to who you are, where you will go and how long you’ll end up successfully playing in that marketplace.
