ALI PENKO PLAY IN PHOTOGRAPHY

When was the last time that you truly just played with your camera?

“LET’S PLAY” is what I always say at the beginning of every photo shoot, even if I am the only one in the room. For me, it’s a reminder. As photographers, we are often bogged down by the seriousness of our industry, the highly competitive, egocentric, solitary reality of running a business. We often forget why we got into the game in the first place.

Photography is a perfect marriage of science and art. A medium all on its own, there is really nothing like it. Training your brain to see differently and solve visual challenges, learning the rules so that you can break them, is all part of the experience.

As a teenager, there was always a camera hanging around my neck. My high school didn’t have a photography class, but there was a secret darkroom where I learned film development and printmaking. I learned through under- and over-exposed disappointing images. At the time, someone told me that film was the cheapest thing in photography, but it was too expensive for me. I had to get better and make each frame count.

I wanted to learn more and pursued photography in my post-secondary education. The science of photography totally blew my mind. I was in love again! I had never been so dedicated or worked so hard at anything in my life. Ideas and inspiration were flowing out of me! I was indestructible.

The one thing that I really didn’t learn at college was that I had to know how to run a business. This got me into some uncomfortable situations with my first few jobs in photography and it made me not love it anymore. There was a period of about three or more years that I didn’t even touch my camera. I lost the magic and forgot what it was that made me love it in the first place. I forgot how to play.

I spent years working in a completely different industry that paid my bills. I chose to pick up my camera only for enjoyment. A personal, private, secret hobby, with results that never saw the light of day. Then something changed. I began to have ideas again. These ideas were unconventional and against everything I had learned formally. I began by cutting up my prints to create new work. Going back into the archives and reinventing images I had taken years ago.

Manipulating light, exploring abstraction, celebrating colour, I was playing. I was excited about what I was doing and began to share my work again. People were responding positively so I continued to create, and enjoyed the process. It was fun again.

Maybe I’m getting older and caring less about what other people think or coming to terms with the idea that photography is part of my core. The one thing I know is that it’s play that keeps calling me back to create and experiment with photography.

I encourage you to pick up your camera, experiment, try a technique or a lens you’ve never used before. Fight the instincts to make a technically perfect image. You never know where it will take you. Remember fun.