If you were to ask a few of my friends what my compulsions are, they would probably say photo-taking*. Just about every time I leave the house, I have my camera with me and am known to pull it out on random occasions and take pictures that are a mixture of posed and candid. I love it... I'd call it my passion, but I think that's underrating the nature of a 'passion'. Because I take photos so regularly (and I mean, regularly. I have 40+ albums on Facebook, most of which have more than 100 photos in them. My catchphrase tends to be "consider yourself tagged"; my friend Andy has 124 photos on the social networking site, and of them I've taken all bar about 6. Nathan was tagged in nearly 200 of my photos, before he deleted his profile), I am well accustomed to what you could call my 'style'. I love group photos, mostly candid, where there is stuff happening in the background as well as the foreground. I like photos with more than one person, usually, but trying to catch their personality or emotion at the time.
What I noticed recently, was that everyone sees the world a bit differently. How? Well, a couple of months ago, I didn't feel like taking the photos myself and so entrusted my camera to my friend for the evening, instructing him to take as many photos as he wanted. The result - a lot of portrait-style, zoomed in shots of my friends faces, taken throughout various stages of the evening. 
Not at all what I would have taken, which was brilliant! It was the first time I'd ever noticed the subtle differences in the way that people look at the world around them.
Not at all what I would have taken, which was brilliant! It was the first time I'd ever noticed the subtle differences in the way that people look at the world around them. A few weeks after this, I went on a road trip to Queensland, where we used a video camera to document our exploits. It was awesome, because we realised when looking back at the footage that it was possible to identify who'd been filming which parts because of what was the focus. Once again, I was astounded by the simple differences in the way that everyone looks at things. It's probably because of this that we get such a variety of films, books, tv shows and works of art. It's one of my favourite things about people, and I hope that I never get used to the idea of the way we see things. Because after all, people can always offer an alternate point of view - on everything. And that's really pretty cool.
*Not photography. I'm not trained or qualified, and I wouldn't dare label my photos as 'art'. Maybe one day, but definitely not yet.
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