Hello friends! How are you this bright shiny new day? Though it’s cold outside and there’s a skiff of snow on the pond and driveway I’m enjoying the sunshine.
I’ve had a small origami failure (I quit in the middle of trying to decipher a new figure’s instructions) sitting on top of my journal on my desk for at least a week. But I’ve decided that I like this “failure” just the way it is. This morning I decided that it looked interesting enough to photograph.
Then I decided to play with the photograph and simply let my imagination wander.
Happy Accidents
There is no meaning or intention behind my imaginings. I was simply playing with images that I had made before, trying out Adobe Photoshop’s “Select Subject” option with some flower photographs.
A lot of my composites start with a kind of free-form play. Some of my favorite creations were happy accidents that happened unexpectedly while I was playing. I especially love it when my other creative pursuits like watercolor painting and origami intersect with my love of photography. I love happy accidents. And I love making time for happy accidents to occur.
But I am also learning about choosing an idea or feeling and then creating an image that expresses that idea or feeling. More and more I am choosing to spend time growing my ability to express a deep feeling or idea. It doesn’t come as easily and takes more work and time.
Both techniques are useful for generating new ideas and finding your artistic voice. It is not a burden for me to make time for both ways of creating. But I’m fortunate to have wide open days and a questing spirit.
Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity…
The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
— Mary Oliver
And then there are workshops and classes
and more intentional work to sharpen your creative “saw.”
No one yet has made a list of places where the extraordinary may happen and where it may not. Still, there are indications. Among crowds, in drawing rooms, among easements and comforts and pleasures, it is seldom seen. It likes the out-of-doors. It likes the concentrating mind. It likes solitude. It is more likely to stick to the risk-taker than the ticket-taker. It isn’t that it would disparage comforts, or the set routines of the world, but that its concern is directed to another place. Its concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge.
— Mary Oliver
The next three days I am taking an online class from the Santa Fe Workshops called “Finding Your Voice.” It’s led by photographer, Joyce Tenneson. I am excited for it to begin tomorrow. The Santa Fe Workshops are famous among serious photographers and I’ve wanted to take one of their workshops for years. Thanks to the pandemic I can take a Santa Fe Workshop from the comfort of my own home. Maybe when we are once again able to safely be out in the world I will look into taking a Santa Fe workshop in Santa Fe.
If I like this class, there’s a Santa Fe Workshop online 3-week flower photography class scheduled for March 2021 that I may sign up for. It’s being taught by flower photographer Kathleen Clemons. I love her work and have watched several short videos of her teaching.
When was the last time you gave yourself space to grow and learn? Or taken a time out to play and allow happy accidents to happen?
May you walk in beauty.
Note: Depending upon how much time my class takes this week I may skip a day or two of writing blog posts.
0 Comments