The Sex Pistols once asked, “Do you ever feel like you’ve been cheated?” I do. I feel that I spent years figuring out all these things like shutter speeds, f-stops, focal lengths, shooting ratios, lighting and whatnot.

It’s all crap.

I realize that you need to transcend. Your medium is merely a vehicle to transmit emotion to your viewer, be it photography, painting, music, a plank of wood, a small carved pebble, or a ball peen hammer to the forehead.

I’m in too deep.

I can’t transcend, I can’t look past the device that is supposed to make the moment. So I’m stuck in a technical morass that there is no escape from. The shame of wanting so badly to make a statement and yet only becoming merely proficient at the technical aspects. Not the mastery of where one can say, “He’s a technical genius” but instead, merely a poseur. Technology has clouded my vision so I see nothing.

I feel like I was cheated.

-Steve Strawn

 

 

SHOWS

Artomatic, Arlington, VA 2008

World of Wonder Storefront Gallery, depARTed, Hollywood, CA 2008

ArlingtonPhoto Show (Juried) Ellipse Gallery, Arlington, VA 2008

12 12 Gallery National Juried Photography Exibition, Richmond, VA 2007

3rd Place

Touchstone Gallery Photo Focus, Washington, DC 2007

Artomatic, Arlington, VA 2007

ArlingtonPhoto Show (Juried) Ellipse Gallery, Arlington, VA 2007

Crafty Bastards (Juried) Washington, DC 2006

Falls Church Arts Open Show Falls Church, VA 2006 & 2007

ArlingtonPhoto Show (Juried) Ellipse Gallery, Arlington, VA 2006

Art.Grind Falls Church, VA 2005

League of Reston Artists (Juried) Reston, VA 2005

League of Reston Artists Photo (Open) Reston, VA 2005

Art-O-Matic Washington, DC 2004