You probably wonder what this post is about…  Boys of course.  Little ones and growing too fast ones.  What about them?  You may know I’m a mother of boys, two wonderful specimens if I say so myself.  Recently I was troubled by some thoughts they were having and it lead me to realize we don’t care much about the boys self image issues.  We make a lot of fuss about the girls image and the way society expects them to be, but what about the boys? They are confronted daily with social expectations, peer pressure and what do we do about it, we simply ignore it.  It’s true that our society puts a lot of pressure towards growing girls, teaching them early to watch every calorie they eat, putting photoshopped models on every screen and magazine.  And we have a lot of work to do about it.  Boys and girls face the same issues, on different levels, but it does have side effects.   And one of these is anxiety.

I must confess I haven’t been shooting much these last days.  I’m not lacking inspiration, I’m just catching up on office work that needs to be done and that I had put aside, for many reasons.  One being, it’s boring!  I tend to favour the more fun, creative part of photography.  But one can’t be shooting and creating all the time.  One also has to update its portfolio, submit work to agencies, upload accepted submissions, and the tedious task of keywording everything.  That’s what I call the B-Side, just like on old music records, there was always this other song you only played when you really had the time for it.  November is quite the perfect time for that, as leaves have fallen, everything is brown or grey and cold.  Until the snow sets in and lights up the landscape, I prefer to be inside and catch up on clerical duties.  

On this day and age, where everything seems so readily available, images, graphics and digital content are often lifted from the web without people ever looking back on their actions and wondering, “Do I have the right to use this content?”.  It seems so easy, even elementary schools teach kids to right-click and add photos to their Powerpoint documents.  Without ever mentioning to these kids that the content belongs to someone and educating them about copyright.

I don’t go in the “big city” often.  Mostly I feel like it’s not worth the time spent jammed in traffic to get there or the price and availability of parking spaces.  Even if it’s really close it sometimes takes a long time to get to your destination.  You see, it’s an island and I live off the island which means I depend on a bridge for access.  Bridges seem to be the main attraction for road accidents, thus blocking everyone in or out of the island.  Often enough to drive you crazy.  And there’s also the road work.  On. Every. Highway.  It’s true I do like my little town surrounded by lakes, just enough city just enough country.  But sometimes I feel the urge to get out, so that’s what I did on my day off last week.  

I’ve been watching a lot of workshops and tutorials lately.  Inspiring ones, I must add.  They left me with an urge to create and in a way I’d never done before.  I often find myself too comfortable in my work, my images come to me easily, like a second nature.  And as much as I love my work, I want more.  I do have a problem though, a big one.  The more I try to challenge myself, the more confused I get.  It’s a bit difficult to explain, but I feel like I can’t really get a grip of who I really am and what I really want.  I’m lost.   And I’m not sure I like that feeling.  Actually, I hate it.