As winter days continue I am finding less and less photographic inspiration looking out the windows of my house or around my house.
Yesterday I went to my daughter’s house to take care of her cat and found new inspiration in a simple change of scene.
Finding Creative Inspiration
For me, a lot of my inspiration for making photographs is an inside job. My motivation comes from choosing to see beauty and to experience wonder in ordinary life. My love of flowers provides another inspiration. And sometimes I attempt to create photographs that express emotions that I am feeling.
But there are times in the middle of the doldrums of winter when I struggle to find inspiration in the narrow surroundings of my home and neighborhood. When that happens I find that a simple thing like a change of scene can provide a spark of inspiration.
Like yesterday at my daughter’s house with her cat Bebe.
Looking out a different window, noticing how the light hits the trees on the far side of my daughter’s backyard, noticing shapes and shadows, helped me to see beauty and everyday grace. I was glad that I had brought my camera with me, “just in case.”
“But inspiration is still sitting there right beside me, and it is trying. Inspiration is trying to send me messages in every form it can—through dreams, through portents, through clues, through coincidences, through déjà vu, through kismet, through surprising waves of attraction and reaction, through the chills that run up my arms, through the hair that stands up on the back of my neck, through the pleasure of something new and surprising, through stubborn ideas that keep me awake all night long . . . whatever works. Inspiration is always trying to work with me.”
― Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Sacred time
It is the act of seeing through the viewfinder of my camera and of working on photos in my photo editors to express what I saw or what I felt about what I saw, that fascinates and nourishes me. The image I produce may or may not turn out well. Or I may like it but the rest of the world may be indifferent to it. The end result doesn’t matter. What matters is how I feel doing the work. Does it feed my soul? If the answer is, “Yes,” that is enough.
“What you produce is not necessarily always sacred, I realized, just because you think it’s sacred. What is sacred is the time that you spend working on the project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life.”
― Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
There are times when finding creative inspiration seems impossible. I think that everyone experiences those times in their creative life. Those times, are a kind of creative winter, I think. The soul needs time to rest and replenish itself. When it has finished resting, something unexpected will trigger a surge of creative inspiration again.
Where are you in your creative life my friends? Are you finding creative inspiration and following it? Or are you feeling stuck in the doldrums?
May you walk in beauty.
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