"It's What I Do"-- First Impressions

     I am really enjoying how Lynsey Addario's book is very personal and a great story to read, filled with true stories yet not a boring, factual biography.  You can really tell that her mind is young and she is full of heart.  I am impressed by the talent she has for photography, knowing that she hadn't even considered it as a career until after graduating from University of Wisconsin, where she studied International Relations.
   
     I also love seeing how courage is apparent in all of her work.  she uses a quote by Robert Capa, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."  This does more for describing her own work rather than Capa's.  You can see in the photographs that she provides in the book, they are high quality products, capturing emotion like no other.  The quote almost says that because she has great photos, you know she had to be inches away from the action.
There is a close up of a soldier assisting a companion where it looks like the shot was taken right up the nose of violence. That is where her courage shows.
 
     If there is anything to be taken from the first chapter, it is that great photographers are not born, they're made.  They're made from passion, soul, and ambition.  Addario is the first to admit that the start of her career was slow going, working from paycheck to paycheck, traveling to different continents just to get a shot that would put her in the competition.  Addario was able to persevere because she had an idealistic belief "that a photograph might affect people's souls."