I follow a fair number of photographers and the ones that I follow are for a specific reason. Often they are mentors, there genre they specialize in is the same as my interests or, they just have sound advice for moving my photography forward. I generally don’t repost someone else’s articles on my blog, but this topic was sound advice and put things in perspective for me so I wanted to share the article.

This photographer is a well know photographer, author living in Vancouver Island, Canada. David Duchemin is a former humanitarian photographer creating images of hope and dignity for the international NGO community, his work pivoted after a life-altering accident while photographing in Italy in 2011. Now he is a below-the-knee amputee, turning his lens toward the natural world and nudging others to pursue a life of intention and creativity. I hope you enjoy the article

Article below © David DuChemin 2026

Your photographs probably don’t matter that much, and neither do mine. The one that just took home the blue ribbon at the state fair? It’s (probably) not going to change the world. The one that just made the cover of that magazine you’ve always hoped might publish your work? In a couple of years, you’ll likely look back on it and see all the things you’d do differently. The one that got all those likes on social? It’s unlikely to be the one you run back into the house to save if your home catches fire. 

It won’t be the cover images from any of my books that are most important to me when I look back on my life.

No, most of the images we photographers go to such lengths to create—the money spent on gear and travel, the time spent getting it just right—really don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things. The one that has pride of place for you right now? Eventually, you won’t even glance at it as you flip past it in your collections.

What will matter is that you made the image in the first place. What will matter is that you experienced the thing with enough curiosity, enough engagement, that you took a second look and raised the camera. It will matter that you were awake and alive to that moment rather than just existing from one breath to another. It will matter that you cared enough, not about the camera, but about the little joys of life that you might otherwise have missed, and if you accumulate those over a lifetime, you’ll have lived with greater joy.

So long as you chase the right things, your pursuit of this craft will take you deeper into wonder about the world around you, give you greater empathy for the people in it, and drive your growth as a human being. 

It will matter that you saw the world from new perspectives and that you tried a new technique and failed the first dozen times. It will matter to you that you did something hard, and it will matter to your soul that you pushed through and learned greater patience. At some point, you will realize all this is less a matter of you making pictures and that mostly the pictures—one by one—are making you.

Your craft, so long as you don’t get bogged too deeply in the muck of the technology around which it all revolves, is making you more awake and alive to the world around you, and that matters.

But knowing that this picture, the one I’m making in this moment, is probably not the best I’ll ever make (especially if making it teaches me something) is not a negative perspective. There is no angst in this. It’s freedom. If one day the photographer I am becoming looks back with ambivalence on the images I’m making now, then I can be less rigid about that work in the moment. I can be more playful. I can take the time to look around and see what I’m missing. I can try out a new technique or take a few creative risks. I can be a little less focused on the results and more focused on the process. I can look more deeply and see with clearer eyes.

How ironic it is then (if not surprising) that this lighter approach seems to be making my photographs better. 

Maybe that’s because my inner critics are getting a little quieter. The voices still chirp away, but I’ve lowered the volume. Because even if they’re right and no one likes my picture or, yes, this time they really are just crap, it doesn’t matter. Not in the long run. What matters is that I make it, that I find the joy and the wonder in the moment. Sometimes—even frequently—that joy and wonder don’t make their way into the photograph, but that doesn’t mean making it was any less important. Not if making it is what makes you more open to it—more awake and alive.

Pick up your camera. Go play. Go look at something new, or find something familiar and look at it from a new perspective. Look longer and deeper. Take your camera on a drive this evening, or walk towards the setting sun and see what those last rays of day will paint on their way west. Slow down. Take a breath. Follow your whims. Find the joy.

No, your photographs probably won’t change the world, but they will change you.

Keep at it, my friend. It matters. 

For the Love of the Photograph,
David