Nestling ~ Jai Johnson, 2013

When we are young and just starting out in the world, most of us have a dream of "what we want to be when we grow up."  From a very young age, I knew I wanted to be an artist.  I knew it from around age five.  It wasn't until I was around age ten that I was introduced to photography.  It was actually my aunt who introduced me to it - she was an avid photographer and on family visits, I would follow her around, begging to take pictures too.  Eventually I got my first camera - it was one of those Kodak Disc Cameras...remember those?  From that point forward, the adventure began.

The problem came in as I grew older and I was constantly pulled and pushed away from what I really wanted to do.  This is when the identity crisis began for me.  I had numerous people in my life telling me I could never make a living - either as an artist or a photographer - and that I needed to do something so I could have a "real" career.  Stupidly, I listened to the words of the masses and put my own dreams to bed.  But I always had a camera and was always taking photos.  Because I knew that was who I truly wanted to be.

Span ahead 20 years or so. I went to college to become "something" and did work I absolutely hated for people who didn't appreciate me as much as I thought they should for many, many years.  At some point, I had enough of it all, and said that's it, I am going back to what I always wanted to be from day one.  An artist...a photographer.  But the identity crisis has continued, because for the past 20 years I haven't been able to decide if I wanted to be an artist OR a photographer.

As you can tell from my website, I've done both.  There's a ton of photography, and a lot of art and digital art, too, in my portfolios.  It wasn't until I combined the two into what I call "artistic photography", that I truly felt like I was finally where I belonged in my own life.  It's what I want to do.  It's who I want to be.  It's what inspires my soul and makes me feel as if I've accomplished something amazing.

I've been in a photography seminar this week and I just visited the teacher's blog.  In one article on her blog she says: "We give so much of our time to others, wondering what they will think or how a certain new piece of work will be accepted, when acceptance is not important, nor are the opinions of others.  Originality is creating from the heart. It is paying little attention to the trends, opinions, or thoughts of the time."

That statement really struck a cord with me, since I've been struggling - not necessarily with originality, but more so with my own identity again.  As a licensed artist, I am required to pay attention the trends.  The opinions and thoughts of others matter on a daily basis.  I am often requested to do works I don't want to do at the moment, but in order to possibly "get the deal", I have to do the work.  I have to drop what I'm doing that I truly love and pick up something I don't want to do at the request of someone else.  What I just realized, is I don't have to do that. I've done it because there's a possibility doing a certain project could make me some income.  And because it's been drilled into my head how important "making an income" is from a young age, I felt I needed to accommodate.

But you know what?  I've discovered most often when I drop what I love to do because of a request of someone else with the "must make an income" thinking in mind, it doesn't even happen.  There's been very few deals come out of that scenario.  And over the past few years, I've been finding ways to decrease expenses so I could continue to do what I love and be who I WANT TO BE in my life.  In the past year, I've actually bought new photography equipment with my earnings from doing the things I didn't want to do, where previously, all that money went to bills.  I decided, however, it was finally time to invest in myself, and invest in who I truly want to be.

So who do I want to be?  I want to be an artistic photographer.  I want to create beautiful works of photography, which when printed on canvas, framed, and viewed from across the room, the viewer will wonder, is that a painting, or a photograph?  I love to create works of photographic art which hang over the fireplace mantel and look like rich, elegant, gorgeous, timeless, classic, fine art.   I love to see the responses of others when I say, "It's a photograph".  Because it is, originally.  Then I take what I've learned from painting, apply it to the photograph, and turn it into art.

Graves Pond ~ Jai Johnson, 2012

I finally feel as if my identity crisis is coming to an end.  I know who I want to be and the type of work I want to spend my time on creating.  I'm to the point where opinions of others do not matter.  What matters is that I create from the heart.  Because that and only that is what is going to make me a success.

--Jai