We have been living the nomad life for a couple of months now. It’s been a lot of fun but not without it’s challenges. We have seen some beautiful country and have had more than our share of beach time. I have been rather stingy on posting our adventures on social media, but have been fairly good about texting and keeping up with friends at home, sending cell phone photos and updating them on our travels.

Our “home” outside of Pensacola, Florida

Most are jealous.

I have been trying to pick up some photo work while on the road. That’s been a little tough, as expected. One of my plans has been to create some fine art images while on the journey. But I’m finding that tough too.

Why, you might ask, would that be tough? I mean we are traveling to new and unique places, (new and unique to me, anyway), and I should have all kinds of inspiration. New places, new scenery, fresh ideas. What, and more profoundly, why is that so hard?

It should be all about vision. After all, I’m a photographer. Vision is my life and my vocation. I have been visualizing ideas and images for 40 years. Clients come to me with their visual problem for me to solve. I have made a pretty good life doing that.

Doing the tourist thing in Kittyhawk, North Caroline

I have been beating myself up about this deficiency for over a month. I am seeing the image, but it’s not right. It has no meaning. It doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t speak to me the way art is supposed to speak to you.

Then it hit me. It’s not the vision I am missing. It’s the voice I’m missing. My voice. My voice as an artist.

Finding your voice as an artist is not an easy endeavor. Sure I can make nice photos, but it has always been for my client. Rarely for me. I have certainly tried, with some limited success, in the past to create art for the sake of, well, art.

Stairs in Savannah, Georgia

Living in Western Colorado, I am in a landscape, nature and scenic wonderland. The landscapes, the mountains and the desert canyons were where it all started for me way back in Jr High and High School. My love, fascination, my obsession with light began there. It is where I fell in love with the world of photography. But, frankly, I’m not great at creating world class landscape photographs anymore. Mostly because I don’t really do them. I know plenty who are great at it. My friend Joe Garza from Wisconsin comes to mind. Look him up.

So, here I am, on the Gulf of Mexico, trying to get some art out there and just can’t do it.

Finding your voice, as an artist, is hard. Photographers talk about finding their style in their work. A way to see the world through the lens. Learning light and color and contrast and composition, and then create photos that reflect that style. But this is different. Voice is not style. Style is what you see and the way you see it. Voice is bigger. It’s heavier. And it’s hard.

One of the classes I taught at Colorado Mesa Tech College the last couple of years was telling stories through photography. It’s about having a story to tell and using photography to tell that story. Giving voice to your work. We use the technical elements of photography, color, light, shadow, perspective to help to the story. We use facial expression and body language of our subjects to give emotion.

I try to do that for my clients, most of them now in the music industry. I like telling their story, whether it is live concert photos or images for album art, it’s my job to give a visual voice to their work. To tell the story of their song visually.

Album art for country singer Lendon James

But those are stories given to me. My client tells me the story they want to tell and I make that happen. My vision for their voice.

But I’m having a really hard time finding my own voice. Sure, I get it together sometimes and have some fine art work I am very happy with. But finding that consistent voice, being about to create art that is mine, from my heart and my vision and my head that actually speaks, much more difficult.

So after years of finding voice for others, it’s time to find my voice.

But that’s just part of the journey.