myLOVE: what do you draw from?

You know, when I'm out taking pictures, whether for myself, or other people, there are things I draw from, sometimes seemingly insignificant, other times so poignant I can't help but notice the connections that are there.  Sometimes it's a shared experience: the death of a parent, social circumstance, the same high school only we didn't know it.  Sometimes it's a vase or a lamp that reminds me of my childhood.  Sometimes it's something that resonates between us, some unspoken words that seem to say, "We've know each other."

Part of what I love about being a photographer is finding those connections - those things we have in common, instead of those things that set us apart - and when those things are uncovered, time slips away and it's as if we've known each other for a hundred lifetimes.  *This* is what spurs me on, what drives me.  It's beyond operating a recording machine.  It's the ability to be humanly connected to the people I share a planet with.

I have to assume that this isn't special to my line of work.  It's not even necessarily a professional thing.  Maybe it's personal.  I know there are photographers out there whose specific goal is the end-product.  It has nothing to do with the person, only the picture.  There's a sense of hollowness in the images they create - a ind of emotional distance that you sense between the photographer and the person being photographed.  I like to think that my subject is a subject, not an object.  A real person, with an entire lifetime of stories to tell, that run the gamut from euphoria to intense anger to compete sadness.  Just like me.

When you connect with other people, have you ever wondered what it is that draws you to them?