It’s impossible to ever know just when or where inspiration will strike for an artist, but it can sometimes be just as unpredictable to even foresee what medium or what form that sudden flash of inspiration might take.
Sometimes, just following a split-second instinct can unlock an entirely new and entirely unexpected kind of creative potential, and it can even redirect the course of an artist’s life and career.
That was definitely the case for Jesse Edgar, currently one of the scene’s most in-demand photographers for everything from the Oklahoma City Philharmonic to Scissortail Park events and even to gigs shooting for the OKC Thunder.
But before all that, he first grabbed attention as the man behind “Oklahoma Abandoned,” a statewide project bringing his photographic eye to long-forgotten and dilapidated buildings all over Oklahoma that accrued tens of thousands of followers across social media.
After decades of pursuing musicmaking and launching his own computer repair business with no ambition for photography at all, Edgar says it was the entirely random decision to bring a long-neglected camera with him on a job that so fully redirected the course of his creativity.
Jesse Edgar: One day, I went to Enid, Oklahoma to fix an old lady's computer, and for some reason, I took that camera with me. I didn't plan on taking pictures. And I was like “I'm gonna take the back roads.”
So I'm driving, and I pass, it's like a little shack, and it had a whole bunch of rusty old farm equipment set beside it. So I was like “You know what? That's cool-looking. That looks like something on an album cover. I got my camera here, I'm gonna get out there. I wanna take some pictures of it, because that's cool-looking.”
Brett Fieldcamp: That one spontaneous whim quickly led to more photography of more abandoned and mysterious places around the state as Edgar found that he not only enjoyed the solitude and the quiet of snapping photos at abandoned sites, but that social media audiences were responding overwhelmingly every time he posted the shots.
And all that without any training or formal education in photography.
Jesse Edgar: Everything technical that I've learned in photography, I have learned from YouTube. I have never taken a class. I've never read a manual. I learned it all from YouTube. That was college for me.
Brett Fieldcamp: But Edgar says that he’s frequently restless and he’s continued to follow his instincts in that same way.
As he studied the artform, he began paying closer attention to the work of other local photographers whose shots caught his eye.
Though he had enjoyed the peace and quiet of his abandoned building photography, he eventually started to envy the kind of wild, palpable energy that he saw in the concert photography of other locals like Dylan Johnson who has captured packed, raucous shows from Austin to New York City.
Jesse Edgar: I fell in love with it and it just blew me away. I was like “This guy is so creative.”
It was just pure, raw creativity in the photos that he did, and you could, you could feel it, you could tell the story of the entire night in one of his photos. And I found that just mind blowing.
I was like “This is amazing. I want to do that.”
Brett Fieldcamp: So on another whim, Edgar dropped the Oklahoma Abandoned project and shifted his focus to concerts, employing that same determination to break into an almost entirely unfamiliar scene.
Jesse Edgar: If there is a show I want to shoot, I will do whatever I can. I will email the venue. I will email the marketing person for that venue, you know, on social media and get an email address. I will get the information I need, and I will reach out to them.
If I don't hear from them, I'll reach out to the bands.
Brett Fieldcamp: It was that tenacity, along with his easy willingness and his quickly evolving skill in capturing the candid energy of a performance or event that caught the attention of Scissortail Park, of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, and eventually of the Thunder, who have had Edgar on hand at multiple games and events to shoot the action both on and off the court.
But that same restlessness and curiosity are still driving him down new avenues, not only for exploring his own creativity, but now for showcasing and spotlighting others as well as a the co-owner of Norman’s Uncanny Art House alongside close friends like Johnson and photographer and painter Chase Spivey.
He says that’s all thanks to his willingness to still follow those split-second instincts and whims to try something new.
Jesse Edgar: I feel like the reason why I have success is because I take a shotgun approach at a lot of things, and a couple of them have stuck, and those are really cool things that have become a huge part of my life.
And nobody sees, you know, those little failures and the things that I was just really bad at and just never got good at.
Right now, though, I'm focusing on trying to make it a viable career. It's become a very, very, very important thing in my life now, the photography has. And I don't know where it's going in the future, but it's looking bright at the moment, and I'm really happy about that.
Brett Fieldcamp: To see Edgar’s photography work, visit jesseedgar.com, and to find transcripts of this show and others, visit KGOU.org.
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