Quotes of the day: 

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

“Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Getting Stuck and Unstuck

Every so often in my work as a photographer, I hit the wall of fear, doubt, resistance, self-criticism, and asking, “Why the h*** am I doing this?”

I get stuck in the muck of self-doubt

This past week I’ve spent a lot of time stuck in the muck and working on getting unstuck.

Impressionist

As I was reflecting on all of the negative things I was telling myself, I challenged myself with, “Is it really true? What have I done in the past 3 months?”

In the past couple of months, I finished teaching my first photography class, had a 6-week exhibit of my Timeless photos from Hawaii at First Universalist in Minneapolis, photographed my brother’s wedding, joined a small group of artists in Richfield in a small gallery that is open during Richfield Farmers Markets every Wednesday afternoon, and displayed my photography at the Hopkins Center for the Arts booth at the Hopkins Farmers Market.

That doesn’t sound like NOTHING.  Actually, it surprises me how much I have been doing.

Hmmm… The problem isn’t that I haven’t been doing anything.

I think what’s been getting me down is that I haven’t done much photography. Other than the wedding and a session doing head shots and shots of a masseur at work, I’ve done very little personal photography.

Placing too much emphasis on publicity, selling, and social media keeps me from doing what I love. It is also a good way to get lazy about photography.

I’ve noticed that I’ve not been doing the kind of long work sessions I used to do, photographing the same subjects over and over in different light, with different lenses, working with the intense focus on learning more about what I love.

I let some pain that prevents me from doing long walks and outings with my camera, stop me from doing photography at home too.

Two days ago, I decided to try a 40-day challenge—to make at least 25 photographs every day for 40 days of something in my house.

Here are the guidelines I set up for myself

• The photo can be staged (0r not)
• I can use either my Canon Rebel or my iPhone camera
• I can bring something in to the house to photograph, or move things around
• It doesn’t matter what I photograph in the house, so long as I am photographing what has heart and meaning for me.

I’m interested in how this challenge might stretch my imagination and encourage new ideas and possibilities. Too often I take a passive role in photography, looking at life as it is to find beauty there.

Not that I want to stop seeing beauty that way, but I also want to create something new or focus on improving my skills. Who knows what ideas will pop or what I may learn along the way?

The first day of my experiment, I took a few “lazy” photos of things that were lying around the house.  I didn’t set up the shots in any special way and I didn’t use my tripod or switch lenses or fiddle a lot with settings. The photos in this post are from my first day shots.

Yesterday, I went down to my little wildflower garden and picked a fern and some wild phlox flowers and set them up in several small vases. I happily played with them much of yesterday and again today!  Today, other than doing a few chores around the house, I spent the whole day making macro shots of wild phlox flowers. What a great day!

I feel as if I’ve a new infusion of enthusiasm and quiet joy. I think I’ve gotten “unstuck!”

Stay tuned as I spend the next 37 days (today is day 3 of my experiment) attempting to make at least 25 photos a day in my house. I’ll be posting some of my photos here and talking about what I learn.