Preparing for life as an Amateur Photographer by Scott Price

Preparing for life as an Amateur Photographer

by Scott Price

Like most parents, my non-work life revolves around my children. For the past 17 years, my photographic life has also revolved around them. Documenting our family’s life, our travels, our adventures and our changes has dominated my photography. Now, as my kids (twin girls) prepare for college, I am preparing for life as an amateur photographer without two beautiful and (usually) willing models constantly on hand. Their journey through late teen-hood (if that’s a term) has helped a bit, because they are around less often, pose less often and generally have less time and patience to participate in photography.

Over the last few months, my wife and I have made two trips to Southern California. One to visit colleges and the other by ourselves because our daughters had planned their own trip to Seattle with friends. For the first time since they’ve been born, I’ve taken a trop that did not include a single picture of my daughters. The change in focus (pun intended) has not been so easy. Rather than having subjects at hand that are of infinite interest, to me anyway, I’ve had to search for pictures, to see my surroundings, to try to capture abstract topics.

Fortunately for me, Southern California is filled with interest. It’s easy to see why the California legislature can impose crippling levels of tax on its citizens – the weather, the ocean, the mountains, the architecture, the lack of bugs (!) all make Southern California a modern Eden for living and a veritable cornucopia for photography.

For these trips, we visited USC and the Claremont schools, which happened to be hosting a pretty big track meet, the Ojai Valley and Santa Barbara. I live in Manhattan, so always enjoy visiting the West Coast that seems more than 3,000 miles away. So very different in topography, people, life styles, really the whole experience.

I’m attaching several of my favorite pictures. I’m a committed user of Leica. The color pictures are from an M10 and black & white are courtesy of my Monochrom. I hope you enjoy.