Photography/Personal Website

I finally made my own photography website: www.JustinGYoung.com It's basically just a shell at this point with a few images to brighten up the homepage. I guess I need a few more dark rainy winter nights to go through all my old stuff so that I can force myself to go through my old material and sort of my best work. I will probably post on both sites though this blog will still have a lot more personal information on it. 

I am glad I finally got around to creating this, especially now that the weather is going to be perfect for the types of outdoor shoots I enjoy most. I like doing a little paid work as it makes it a hobby that basically pays for itself. I especially like event coverage as it gives me a way to meet a variety of new people I might not approach otherwise. 

I am also hoping that more than anything else it also gives me a reason to redouble and focus my efforts of some long-standing projects I have wanted to complete. I have some stories I want to tell and now I have a place to share them in the way I want them to be seen. I like the social aspect of sharing them on sites like Facebook, but I don't really feel it's the right place (or audience) for the types of things I want to do. 

One is simply a local interest project where I would like to record some of the most iconic (but often over-looked) piece of Americana here in Columbia. There are a few things that would look absolutely bizarre to an out-sider, but to someone who grew up here they seem completely normal. I think they say a lot about the character of this place and what makes it different from other parts of the country. 
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The second is to document the distinctive faces I regularly see at flea markets. They just have so much more emotion and character than I tend to see on streets where everyone seems to have homogenized their appearance around a uniform perspective of beauty.  At these markets, the faces range from the forlorn droopy to bright smiles bursting through old leathery, whiskered skin. They are black, white and brown. Most are poor an uneducated. However, I have started to see them differently. As a kid plundering around at these markets,  I might have seem them as sad, pitiful people.  People would were unfortunate or should have tried harder in life. I saw a great distance between who they were and who I was at the time (and what I hoped to become). Now, I just see them as people. I just want to show their common humanity - that regardless of their circumstances (or even what they did wrong) they still have the same hopes, fears and disappointments. This isn't really for anyone else but me. (Update: Just came across this TED talk  in which the author does the same thing and expands on it)

​Last is to wrap up one on the industrialization of small South Carolina farms. The earth and the genetically modified crops have all become a living factory. I don't think this is a particularly new idea, but the what is most interesting is the predictability of it all. How things have become so quantifiable. I guess it's the loss of mystery and chance. No longer are things left up to the cooperation of a stubborn mule and uncertain raindrops. Everything has been laid out. There is something a lot less magical about it now. It's almost as big a difference as is found between a putting green at the Master's and a putt -putt course in Myrtle Beach. Something is just lost.​

On an unrelated note, this is also the 500th post I have written on this blog, so I guess this means I have finally committed to something.