Another look at value.

Hello again and welcome back to the mental meanderings of NathanPhoto, this weeks has been a one but I’m turning up and I’m returning to the subject of value. The reasoning behind this is a combination of thoughts, combining the time of year, ideas of the future, writing applications and a re-evaluating of the socials. Well I did say that this was a mental meandering, shall I try and untangle them a bit?

First up is the one thing that none of us can escape and that is time. Specifically it’s that time of year where no one can escape what’s happening this December 25th (think and thank capitalism!!!) Again this year I’ll be doing an image a day of Christmas (as I see it) which sort of takes the form of an advent calendar. Believe this is the 20th incarnation of it, I think anyway, memory is a little hazy around it. I started it as an antidote to the lack of Christmas cheer that I was feeling, it is a tough time of year for many people, so thought I’d use my passion and the power of photography to help inject a bit of magic back into this festive time of year. Not sure I’ve succeeded with it yet, had an anxious dream about working Christmas day the other night and that’s something I’ve not done for an age!

Then after that finishes I’ll be looking at the year ahead and in doing that looking at my year in pictures as a roundup. This will be a very different year and a much wider prospect than in previous years. This is because of how 2023 has shifted the way I work. The change in working styles and subject matter is quite pronounced, it’s been a mixed year that started quite well with a new long-term project that hit the ground running but unfortunately had a little slipup towards the end, same with the NP monthly word which fell a little by the wayside. I’ll look at both of them, include some of the images and then write an honest appraisal of them in the new year.

As I’m hoping to get a few collection of images out in 2024, I’m looking at publications then possible shows or submissions so the process of that has started with the collating, editing and reflection that they need. It can be a long and winding road this one with many twists and turns so we shall see where we end up.

Speaking of submissions, I’ve also applied for various opportunities and as they all need words in different formats to say who/what/how/why I am. Applications are funny, aren’t they? They have a way of bringing up many thoughts and ideas, some of which aren’t at all contusive to development. The main ones this time were mainly centred around who exactly I am now? and what value does that have? If I’m honest possibly my head/heart wasn’t completely sure of which value to accentuate. There’s that word again, Value!

I hesitate slightly to mention this as it opens up particularly heavy ideas, and while I want this blog to be honest and reflective, I don’t necessarily want to drill right down into that as the weight of the findings may drag this meandering into something that it isn’t intended to be. But I will try and sum it up a little. My basic premise is that it appears that the workplace is increasingly informing me that my stock is not only losing value if may have lost its value completely. In many places it appears that they don’t particularly value any of it.

This isn’t always palatable to discuss outside of my own head, as it does raise certain connotations, many of which I don’t want to associate myself with. But I feel like this will need further examination quite soon, just need to sort the wording and also, the tone will be incredibly important, may well need to leave that to a specific future blog.

Moving on then, if you combine all of that together, then add in the last dash of my thoughts on the usage of my socials, then you have the mixture ready for this blog.

The use of socials is something I touched upon this a little in last week’s blog. The main point being around the idea of how I use/interact/live with socialmedia and from what I can see this is quite pertinent to many other people recently. For me it partly came to light through usage of Threads (the new Instagram alternate to Twitter, now it has become the hell site X.) A lot of people using it have been posting introductions, what they stand for and what they would like the algorithms to bring them.

This got me thinking about who I am and how I can express myself, much like the applications requiring the personal statement. I’ve joined a new social called ‘Threads’, but I’ve done this under my Research Practice profile though, as it seems that you can only join once. Therefore most of what NathanPhoto is about, isn’t quite relevant/possibly not a great fit for it, but like most things in life you only get out what you put in,

This is especially true of the socialmedias, so will just have to put some work at/out what I want to say, how I want to say, and most importantly, why I want to say it.

There we go then, and I’ve seemingly ended up with more questions than answers in this one, the main questions which I don’t have answers for this at this moment is but will revisit in another meandering are:

·      What is my value?

·      Does that have any value to anyone else?

·      Is money the only real value that can be applied?

Interesting this subject may stretch across all my other profiles but that’s it for now.

As is customary I will leave you with an image, this one I shared on Instagram and is of the winter light that is so very beautiful at this time of year.

Modern, contemporary buildings are lit by a crisp winters sunshine which is low in the sky. The composition isn’t great though and detracts from the image. A cctv camera perches in the top right corner, was this possibly the subject of the image?

It also fits in with the word that I think most identifies NathanPhoto at this current time. That word is ‘Pleasant’. And one last question, does this image say pleasant to you?

Thank you for reading and if you have anything you’d like to say, question or meander about then please get me via the usual channels.