Now, where have I been?
Weeeeelll....
My parents had been visiting for three weeks and I have been out enjoying the beautiful autumn weather....
...and taking one million, bazillion photographs.
Phew!
I don't think that I'll ever process them all!
There have been other things going on (not to mention the five significant birthdays that all pile into October) but I have, also, in between all of the busyness, been having a good ol' think about photography and what I'm learning and where I'm going with it. Och! There's too much to share it all at once. Today, I just wanted to share one little tiny bit of my thoughts with you.
and, now, that I've gotten this far and taken a deep breath to express myself, I find myself overwhelmed and deflating a little .... I don't quite know how to say it.
Perhaps I can start here.
I got a short e-book from one of my favorite photography book authors, David duChemin. It's called, "The Inspired Eye". He says this (starting off with a familiar quote):
"All children are artists. The problem is how he remains an artist once he grows up."
~Pablo Picasso
If you want to allow your muse or imagination to flourish you need to recall those childhood instincts.
Art is a subversive activity. ...You must, must, start making mistakes. You must risk. you must; it's not optional. If you are not making mistakes and falling on your face over and over again, if you don't embrace making these mistakes, then you're not risking enough and you're not working close enough to the edges of your own creativity. Art is not for the safe and when it operates within the confines of safety it creates only the familiar and unexceptional.
.... It's only a perspective shift, a change of paradigms, but what if, instead of mastery, the goal was to get to the place we once were? To play, to ask "What if?" and to colour outside of the lines and never within them unless it suits our fancy.
Or,
as Mary Carroll has said to me, before, "it's only digital, Katy, why not try it out and see what happens?"
Or,
as my dad says, 'you're never going to learn unless you make mistakes. In fact, that's the way to learn. What's going to happen if you make a mistake? You'll just learn, "well, that's one way not to do it."'
I say, well, you never know....if I make a mistake and people look at an image that isn't 'perfect', the earth might just crumble into dust around me....or not!
I don't know why I get too frozen or discouraged, sometimes, to create. I'm not quite sure what I'm afraid of. It freezes my brain and my joy. I just plod along, trying to stay safe and not call attention to myself and think there's nothing more to discover. Then, when I least expect it, inspiration hits and, even if it doesn't turn out to be anything exciting, this time, you never know where it will lead. It's a step and, at least, it was fun to get outside of that box for two seconds. It's so happy to find that moment - to simply be outside of self doubt, finding joy in the wondering and to be bravely exploring. ...to remember how to....play!
...to remember what it's like to be an artless child, again.
