Hi Everyone,
I hope it’s getting a little warmer where you are, a little gentler. This time, we’re talking about the deliberate act of enjoying something, free from expectation or requirement. Capturing something objectively beautiful for the sake of it; not as an output, but as an input. In my world, that manifests itself as photos of flowers.
Building on Delight
I think it’s pretty well established that the more you’re on the lookout for something, the harder it feels to find. I remember tangibly learning that lesson as a teenager, because there was a video game I loved that had a weird behaviour where if you even thought about a sports car, all the game would provide you with was trucks. To find a sports car, you had to forget that you wanted one. Then finally, when you gave up and started driving anything else, suddenly you’d see sports cars appearing everywhere.
It’s the same in life as in photography. Without the right mindset, walking around with the intent of making some new work can can feel impossible, as if nothing I’m looking at feels ‘worth it’ enough to capture. It’s compounded when film’s at the price it is currently, and you’re literally counting dollars on each slap of the shutter. I say this only for me and my experience; the cure to the creative paralysis is flowers.
I can always count on looking for the flowers to get myself started on seeing more subjects that might inspire me. My goal is not to build up a collection of work featuring flowers, or to make an image that stands the test of time - frankly I might not ever look at the result. It’s often none of my business. The flower was beautiful, and that’s where my attention towards it stops. It’s being encouraged me to take the picture, the necessary first step towards taking even more pictures. Maybe getting a good one.
When I look back at a lot of my rolls of film over the years, it’s not uncommon that there’s a picture of a few flowers right in the middle of them. I don’t regret a single one, even though they’re ‘filler’ - little reminders that I was tired or shy at that point in the process. They kept me from giving up that day and that’s delightful.
I’m in the middle of it right now. I didn’t even realise that I was a little creatively depressed until I started noticing the flowers on my morning walk and impulsively reaching for my camera. What’s wild is that my subconscious was one step ahead of my conscious mind on this one - I haven’t made much new work in a few weeks, and as I read it, my mind was finding it’s own ways to cope with that. It started looking for the flowers.
Obviously, it might not be flowers for you, but my little advice would be to lean in on whatever it is that catches your attention because you find it beautiful or interesting - especially if it’s entirely separate from the work you normally produce. We’re not creatures built for endless consumption and our attention is in constant demand from so many relatively pointless sources. If you see something you like, and you have the ability to delight in it, that will always be productive.
