Quote of the day:
“It’s not about avoiding risk. It never is. Because the risk is always there and always truly unknown. There are no safe bets. What there is, and always has been, is choice in the face of the unknown. You follow your heart, and the best wisdom you can find in the light available to you, and then you choose. Intentionally, whole-heartedly, and knowing there will be fears and doubts, and parts of it will be scary as all hell at times. To do otherwise—to play is safe—is delusional, because safety is an illusion… Life and art, is about choosing.” — David duChemin, A Beautiful Anarchy: When the Life Creative Becomes the Life Created
I’ve been making self-portraits for an online iPhone photography class that I’m taking. At first I had no new ideas about what to do or how to make something that expressed my thoughts and ideas.
Choosing to Create
On a daily basis I pick up my iPhone camera and the tripod make photographs, even though I don’t feel inspired to do some of the amazing artwork I’ve seen made with iPhones.
I am learning things about composition, space, intention,
One application I’ve been playing with has a method of layering textures or other photos on top of a photo I made. I’ve become totally obsessed with the layering of birds on my photos. But yesterday I tried something new and added a butterfly that I had photographed myself.
It was part of an experiment of having the iPhone on a tripod and then moving my face as close as I could to the camera. It’s a very experimental form of art because I use a camera timer so that I can press the button to take a photo and then move into place. Because I’m not seeing what the camera sees, there are many surprises.
What I am learning is that by choosing to make photographs and then working with them or rather playing with them, ideas emerge. The intention of play is absolutely necessary for my endeavors.
Choosing to create is simple. What holds me back are the judgments about whether the stuff I create is “good enough” or “worthy.” When I move to a place of no judgment, entering play space, I become willing to try things. Of course some of them don’t work out. Of course not everything works as I want it to. But in that little space of experimentation and allowing magic happens.
Where can you bring the intention of play into what you choose to create?
May you walk in beauty.
0 Comments