Using Your Photography Hobby to Make a Difference
Saturday, June 7, 2008 @ 07:49
Lots of people in this business have multiple goals. Some are looking for professional success and all that brings, money, recognition and self-fulfillment. Others are more tuned to the bigger picture, making a difference with their photographs by using it to highlight the unfairness and poverty rampant in our world.
Ingrained within each and everyone of us is the desire to help others, but often that is overshadowed by other, more practical matters, such as making a day-to-day living with the pictures we take.
Many of us have asked is it possible to harness our talent behind a camera and use it to help others, while still paying the monthly bills?
Well, photographers Phil Borges and Coolin Finlay are two people who do just that. Their mission in life is to focus on important social and humanitarian issues around the world and use that focus to also pay the bills.
In order to bring the plight of others, less fortunate, to public awareness first involves a love of travel. Many of the most heartbreaking scenes we can photograph, the blatant poverty, the life-threatening conditions many people live under, all of these can only be viewed by traveling far from home. Remember, the locales where you will shoot these scenes won't be places with five-star hotels right around the corner. They will be in remote locations without any of the creature comforts most of us are used to, such as running water and electricity.
As Colin Finlay, one of these globetrotting humanitarian photographers said, "when I take my last breath on earth, I want to know I have made a difference." So, that's why he takes his camera and travels to the far corners of the earth, photographing subjects most of us would never see were it not for his cameras and skill. It's also why he has managed to not only achieve professional success and recognition for his work, but added a dimension of meaningfulness to his life as well. There's no reason any one of us can't do the same.
