I can’t tell you who said this, I saw it on a reel and now I can’t find it again but it was a clip from some kind of conference style q&a and went like this:

Audience member: “Is jazz music for the player or the listener?”

Speaker: “Music is always for the listener. But the first listener is always the player.”

I find that so profound. Honestly I’ve thought about it so much since I heard it.

Realising that the music (our photography) is always for the listener (our clients) but that the first listener is always ourselves…

And the meaning I’ve derived from that is that to be fulfilled artistically we need to be first of all making photos that we enjoy.

We are the first ‘viewers’ of our work, and on top of obviously delivering photos to our clients we are also attempting, in my opinion, to build a career-spanning portfolio of work that we can stand by when the time comes to hang up our cameras for the final time and say ‘hey look what I spent the last few decades working on’.

Of course, when I eventually retire – which won’t be any time soon… but when I do I will get immense fulfilment from knowing I’ve left a legacy of truly meaningful photos for all my clients.

But I also want to have something that I can personally look at and say, man alive I’m proud of this on a personal artistic level.

And ‘artistic’ in this sense has no specific definition. Just as jazz music is an open genre of music.

I like to think we’re all just out here creating visual jazz.

Thanks for reading.

Adam