 How's it, how's it? I hope everyone is having a great 2022 so far. Now, wherever you look in January, see people seem to be selling gold. You lose weight, quit smoking, you know, the usual sort of things. And goals are all well-engrewed, but they are also extremely individual. You may have a different idea of what a goal looks like in your photography than the person next to you, who would also be watching this. In a community post recently, when planning out content for the start of the year, there was a comment by Peter Van Riet, who said that he would remind me of a Simon C-neck talk called Start With Your Why. So if you are struggling to find direction and purpose with your photography, then start looking at your why. Without this why, you don't really have a place to start from, so there's no real direction to your image taking. The basic idea of Simon's talk is this, that think of three concentric circles, why, how, and what. A lot of people focus mainly on the what and the how, not necessarily on the why. Now, to cannibalize Simon's C-neck quote again, all photographers start with their why, but only the great ones keep their why clear year after year. If I were to ask you right now about your own why, you might come back with a stock answer. I enjoy it or it's my passion or something like that. You know the things that come out all the time, but have you really stopped to consider your own why? Your why is buried somewhere deep in your subconscious and it can be very hard to uncover this by yourself, but once you have rediscovered your own why, then you'll have a clear idea of what is driving you. It is driving you to take photographs and then with that renewed passion, you're gonna have a better chance of heading in a direction with your images that aligns with your personal feelings about photography. You won't be chasing goals and directions that other people have said you should because that's never really going to unlock your true potential as a photographer. But when you go back to your why, to the thing that is unique to you, it is like having your own map and a compass to a secret treasure chest. Without these very personal items, your photography won't really have any direction. Those goals you'll be chasing will feel hollow because well, it was never really your goal in the first place. Growing up in the late 1970s and early 80s, I lived in a household where my father was like the poster child for DIY. Not just the house, but everything. If it could be fixed or made from scratch, he did it. He took great pleasure in showing me what he was working on or explaining things like concepts of seasonality over the dinner table with a marker pen and a balloon. He was also into photography, as was my Scottish grandfather. And between them, they introduced me to the idea of taking photographs, like really taking photographs, not just snapshot trips to the beach, but art, if you want to call that for a broader term. Aside from dad giving me some tips, you know the usual, stand with the son behind you, don't cut somebody's head off, yadda yadda yadda. I also looked through those old leaflets that used to come with cameras. Do you remember the ones? You know, they were full of quite average, it has to be said, images of photography concepts, which was trying to explain, you know, how to use the camera shutter speed and things like that. I wasn't good at a lot of things that dad did, you know, electronic carpentry and what have you, but I understood photography better. It seemed to make more sense to me. It had less of an arbitrary feel to it than say making a pep in the middle out of a lump of wood on a lathe. That's one of dad's hobbies. Like most boys of a certain age, I wanted my dad to be proud of me. So I took to photography as a way of connecting with him, of having a shared interest. It was a way of doing something with dad on what I consider to be like an equal footing. It made me feel happy to get praise from him about my pictures or to be able to share with him something about photography that I'd learned at the library that he didn't know. At the time, there were no thoughts in my head about, you know, awards or money or fame or likes or shares or any of that kind of stuff. Just wanting to add to that common bond between my dad and myself. And that keenness stayed up with me until I started actually studying photography as a youngster. Now, it's only now when I look back on that period that I can see where my why was planted. I'd taken photographs to connect with a specific person, my dad. The feedback and the thrill I got from sharing my growth with him and sharing my interest in photography is what kept me taking photographs when all the other hobbies of mine just kind of came and went. As a child, you may have also had a similar introduction to photography or you might have come to it at a later stage in life. But however you started, I like you to think back to that time, to think about the feeling that you got from your photos because that will give you a clue as to how to rediscover your own why. It might not be apparently immediately apparent, but in fact, you know, it probably won't be, but trust me, it's there somewhere. It's tucked away inside. You just have to tease it out by going back to the subjects that you enjoyed. Photographing. Think about the things that you were instinctively drawn to when you first picked up a camera. You know, in my case, the photographs that I took as a young child, they were more kind of like, you know, trying out a concept or technique that I'd seen in a magazine or a brochure because I could show them to my dad and he has this kind of analytical sort of educational sort of mind that would respond positively to those things. So think about your own photographs. You know, did you take pictures of your family, of all the people, your family, your friends around you, or were you drawn to images in the garden of the dogs, the cats, or the trees or the leaves? Start thinking about that. It's, it is a real clue about the pool that you were drawing from, that pool that you can go back to, to dip your toe, to see if you can revitalize this drive within you. It's extremely foolish of me to try and give you specific instructions on where you will find your way because, you know, well, each of us is, well, we're unique, you know, just like me, right? But what I can do is give you suggestions about where you might start looking for it. If you grew up in a large family, you photographed all your siblings, your cousins and your aunts and uncles, and you got a real kick out of it, then you might find that these days taking photographs of things without people in doesn't feel quite as fulfilling as taking photographs of elements with people in. So stop and think about what it is that really connects with you now with your photography and trace that back. Trace it back to see if it has a stem from when you first took up a camera. Okay, Alex, so this is all well and groovy, I can hear you say, you know, but if you can't tell me what my why is, then how am I going to be able to recognize it? As a child, Richard Avidon, one of the greatest fashion photographers of all time spent hours at his parents' dress store on Fifth Avenue in New York. Surrounded by dresses and fashion and people knowledgeable about such things, you can see how this implanted itself in his why. And it's telling that he has an early recollection of seeing a fashion shoot on the streets of New York that came back to him at a later stage. He said that one evening, him and his father were walking down Fifth Avenue, and he remembered seeing a man in front of the Plaza Hotel taking photographs of a woman up against a tree, you know, lifting her head, adjusting her dress, all that sort of thing. And then later on, he saw the picture in Harpers Bazaar. At the time, he said he didn't understand why she was against that tree until a few years later, he was in Paris. And he realized that that tree looked very much the same as the trees around the Champs Elysees. He also photographed his sister a great deal. And she later developed schizophrenia and ended up in an asylum. And this had a huge impact on the image-taking of Aberdeen. He later recollected that he thought that he photographed things that he was afraid of, the things he couldn't deal with. His father's death, madness. When he was young and woman and he didn't understand them, you know? He felt that it gave him a sort of a control of the situation which was, you know, legitimized because of the photography. And by photographing what he was afraid of, what he was interested in, he laid what he called the ghost that he said that he got it out of his system and onto the page. Now, of course, you don't need to be as eloquent in your why or as highbrow as Aberdeen. And, you know, because obviously, you know, you're not going to be interviewed pretty much day in, day out. So you're not going to have time to ponder these sort of things. But what you can take from this is that there are certain events, feelings, ideas, concepts, you know, that stuck with Aberdeen throughout his life. So go back and think about the moments in your time with photography that will stay with you now. Those little events that, if you close your eyes, you'll back in there, all right? Even if you've only been taking Freda Gross for a month, it doesn't matter. Those moments, those events that spring to mind, they are echoes of your why. Don't limit yourself to specific areas when trying to tease out your why. It's maybe not where I'm in, where you think it is. In 2020, I was sitting with my father talking about plans for my then-and-yet-unborn YouTube channel about photography. The studio was still closed while because of, you know, things, right? And the more that I thought about reopening it, the more that I was really disinclined to do so, dad didn't really understand why I could just kind of, in his words, give up on photography like this. And I explained to him that taking Freda Gross and other people's family didn't make me happy and that it didn't make me happy, certainly, in a way that talking about photography did and discussing photography as I used to do with him as a child. And then when this channel got going, I was reminded of that feeling. But by accident almost, I came back to my why. And I had that joy of sharing a mutual interest with you. And when that happened, my photography changed, the way that I approached photography changed because I was sharing with you the ideas that are inspiring. I'm trying to inspire you and make you enjoy your photography. And by almost by accident, I was all of a sudden finding purpose with my photography again, finding direction because I want to embark on that same journey that you are on right now, that it is such a wonderful thing of discovery. And that's why you never know where your why, where your drive, where your passion sprung from. And you must be open to any sort of ideas to follow it. But I know, I know it's scary. It is so scary to follow your gut instinct. Even if it's just photographing something or your friends might think is beneath you or isn't fashionable. But just rip that bandaid off, man. Just go back to your roots, revisit and rediscover your why and find new purpose, new direction in your photography for the year ahead. When your why becomes clear, that doesn't mean you have to remain sort of in some sort of strict genre conformity and only photograph things in a certain way. Peter, the man with the original comment, he proposed that once you understand your why, that you can return to it to explore the different places it may take you. Now, unlike in the past when you explore photography, now you realize how important that why is and you will carry some of it with you. So your voice will be truer. If you're ever feeling aimless with your photography, put your camera down, kick up your feet, have a coffee and start taking time to remember why you took photographs in the first place. Obi-Wan Alba Hadza is a photographer with an extremely strong sense of why. And I know you would love his photographs. His images are awesome and I dare you not to watch this video. They're gonna put it over here and smile through it. Thanks ever so much for watching.