I am normally a very un-analytical person. Things just are the way they are, analysing them always makes me depressed because there’s so much I can’t change and I don’t need the headache. Put this in a small scale and I think I have figured out why I want to take the kind of photographs I take. I have a nasty streak of control freak in me, so it’s natural that I try to control everything I can, and equally natural that I dislike everything that I have no control over. It was none too early that I learned to live with that instead of getting stressed about the world around me. Photography by default gives me a chance to control – I can choose what I shoot, when I shoot, how I shoot. In a chaotic world I have a need to bring order, I do this by compositionally eliminating everything in the image until all that remains is just the one thing I wanted to show. Maybe the result is boring… and I’m not all too happy to say this, but maybe that is an accurate reflection of me. It is entirely possible that I am a boring person.

Hello, my name is Minna and I am boring.

There, admitting the problem is the first step to recover from it. Although I’m not sure if this is the kind of problem I want to fix. I like my pictures – boring is my style. Maybe in time as I develop as a photographer, my pictures will get a bit more exciting. But this is where I am right now.

Ask any budding nature photographer why they like photography, and sooner or later they will say that they want to show things to other people, such things that people don’t normally think about. Pick a detail, show it to someone and hear them gasp, ”wow I never saw that”! I was like that, until I noticed that every photographer said the same thing. That cut me down to size… so much for my unique ability. In fact, every day I see images from other photogs which make me go ”wow I never saw that”! I’m not discouraged however, in the end it’s not the reactions that keep me going on, it’s what photography gives me – the opportunity to control. I go so far as to isolate my subjects by excluding all distractions (for many others they seem to be essential elements though) but the result I get is why I wanted to take the picture in the first place. If other people don’t like it, I just have to live with it, even if deep down it eats me a little to know that the picture is a reflection of me and by rejecting the picture, they are rejecting a part of me. That’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it? For any artist, any form of art… the creation is always a part of you, you just need to grow elephant skin to face the rejection with a smile, and build a self confidence equivalent of Mount Everest to believe that what you are doing is the right thing to do, to hell with anyone who doesn’t agree!

Peace.