We had the good fortune of connecting with Patrick Morris.
Hi Patrick, what led you to pursue a creative path professionally?
When I was a child, my uncle worked for Kodak. He’d gone to RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) for photography and worked with Kodak out of college until the mid-90s. Every so often, he’d send me a Kodak camera to play with, and some film. The first camera he gave me was a 110 format Mickey Mouse camera when I was around 7 or 8 years old.
Due to some changes in how my county handled graduation requirements, I ended up with a lot of empty space in my schedule during my senior year of high school. So I was able to take Photography 1 through 3 in a single year. I initially took it just to fill the extra space and it sounded fun. But, for as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with the magic involved with creating images. Maybe it was because of the cameras my uncle had sent me when I was younger, but even downloading photos from old bulletin-board systems (prior to the internet), and printing them out on an early inkjet printer was absolutely captivating to me. It really was magical.
Because digital was in its infancy at the time, my photography class in high school had a darkroom. So, it was then that I got to experience what it was like to see an image appear on paper in the darkroom in chemistry. If you’ve never been to a dark room, it’s hard to explain the visceral experience of it. The chemistry has a specific smell that stays on your hands for a day or two after, there’s a zen-like experience of being in the dimly lit room, with the sound of trickling water in the sinks, and someone’s choice of indie music playing in the background. Then there’s the joy of finally getting a print right. So I was hooked.
When you’re 18, you’re expected to know what you plan to do for the rest of your life. I’d applied to multiple universities and got accepted to a few, but I still needed to figure out what to do with my life. I thought about joining the military and becoming a pilot. I thought about going to college for meteorology. But in the end, I was absolutely hooked and fascinated with photography. So I went to the University of North Florida and pursued a degree in Photography. What a blast it was. In the end, it’s been a very difficult path to follow.
I mainly make my living in software these days, but art is my permanent side-gig. It’s an undying passion that refuses to leave. I can’t leave the house without looking at the light and searching for new images to shoot. Every trip I plan involves searching out images to capture. Having a degree in fine art, I’ve moved into a realm few of my peers were able to follow.
Rather than attempting to do art for money’s sake, I’ve been able to discover the freedom that can be found in doing art for art’s sake. I’m able to create what I want to create, regardless of what the market tells me it wants. And, in doing so, I’m happy and not at all burned out.
Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I have always been drawn to landscape photography. Initially, it started as a means to an end: I wanted to go see, with my own eyes, the amazing places I’d seen in others’ photographs. Over time, that desire has lessened as I realized I was just shooting the same things everyone else had been shooting. It was no longer rewarding. As Instagram grew in popularity, so did the popularity of the once-quiet places where I used to find solitude.
Along with moving away from iconic imagery, over the last decade, I’ve also been moving more into a minimalist type of imagery by breaking down scenes into simpler elemental forms. I find that searching for and creating this kind of image has brought me the most joy.
Additionally, I take great pride in doing careful forms of editing. I want to respect the image I captured as best I can and convey the emotion that I want the image to show. While I’m not above compositing images together, changing colors, removing distracting elements, or adding new ones in, I always strive to do so within the realm of believability.
Recently, I’ve embarked upon attempting to meld long exposure images with shorter exposures captured of quicker moving things to show their place in that moment of time. Blending time can help smooth out the chaos of the ever-moving world and help the eyes focus on an object or animal, living its life and going about its day. This is still a new topic of focus for me, so I don’t have many images to show for it. I’m excited to see where it leads and what kind of images come from it.
I think the most important thing I’ve learned as an artist, over the years, is to slow down and take my time. I’ve learned to focus on what I’m trying to capture and have gained the ability to weed out distracting elements that would detract from an otherwise strong image. This new area of interest for me is the culmination of this endeavor because I’m now finding a way to re-introduce specific things that might be eliminated from my image through the nature of its capture.
If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
This is a bit awkward of a question for me as I’m not a Coloradan. I’ll answer it as a Floridian and share some of my favorite spots here, in my hometown, Jacksonville. If it’s the beaches you’re looking for, we definitely have those. We have beautiful white sand beaches, but we also have some really cool geologically unique beaches here.
There is the Talbot Islands north of town that have driftwood along with them, and south of town towards St. Augustine, there are coquina rocks jutting up from the sand along the beaches.
That said, while Florida is known for its beaches, there are other great things to do around here. In Jacksonville, we have nearly endless amounts of saltwater marsh that are great for kayaking and fishing. It’s very easy to get away from all of the noise and bustle of the city and get out into nature.
You can’t visit a coastal town like ours without venturing out to get seafood. There’s a great little local place nearby called Chowder Ted’s that serves a different kind of clam chowder called Minorcan Clam Chowder. It’s tomato-based and spicy, and super delicious. The place is a little hole in the wall and easy to pass by, but totally worth a stop. It also happens to be on the way to the Talbot Islands, if you’re out touring around.
Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Early on, I stumbled a lot with understanding the purpose of what I was doing with my photography. I struggled with the frustration of developing my place and market for my work. I chased after what I thought would sell rather than doing what made me happy.
A co-worker of mine, John Evans, left the software company I was working for at the time to pursue his own passion: electrical engineering. He has a degree in it and decided he wanted to strike out on his own to work on some personal projects. He’s done some really cool things: Designing and building amps and speakers from scratch, building tools to help him assemble small circuit boards, and lately, he’s been working on a wrist-mounted computer to track his skydives.
What I learned from him was to pursue what brings you joy. It’s around the time he struck out with his own endeavors that I discovered Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why”. It all clicked: have a good reason for doing what you do, love it, believe it, and people will follow because they believe in it too and want to. John does that very well, so he absolutely deserves a shout-out for inspiring me and causing me to introspect and refocus my vision.
Contact information:
- Website: https://www.patrickmorrisphoto.com
- Instagram: @patrickmorrisphoto
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PatrickMorrisPhoto
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