Why...

Most photos shown here link to other posts that further illustrate my entry.

I started taking photos for all the wrong reasons (or I suppose, precisely at the time when I needed it most).  I was in a really negative thinking pattern, caught up in feelings of inadequacy and jealousy.  Full of resentment, discontent, and with an “I’ll show you” attitude, I picked up my camera and started a blog.  I see now, there is great healing power in art though, and she worked her magic, turning wrong into right, difficult to comfort, challenge to blessing.  By August of last year, things had begun to shift for me.

Old ways of thinking and being cracked and crumbled and fell away – some quietly and some not so.  By December, making pictures had become more of a way for me to make sense of things and shine my light into the world and less of a need to prove my worthiness.  This year, making pictures has become a powerful tool for coping and self-expression, throwing open the door to possibility, wonder, and joyfulness.

What I’ve noticed about why I make pictures:


I'm highly sensitive and easily (and often) overwhelmed.

Making pictures helps to break things down into more manageable bits.

Making pictures gives me a container to hold waves of emotion and sometimes grief.


Making pictures provides breadcrumbs to find my way away from depression.  I’m a baby-step sort of person, and find that first small step to be the hardest.

When it feels like nothing is working, there’s too much to do, things start to whirl and swirl and I’m adrift, just doing one thing can help.  Often now, that one thing is taking a photo.  Making a picture anchors me.  It helps me be in the moment and to see that moment differently.  I am able to bring appreciation, gratitude, love, acceptance, and thankfulness into the moment, upping the happy and lowering the desire to depress.  Each day I make time for myself and this creative endeavor and these brief moments rain blessings on the rest of my day.

The daily practice piece, my 365 projects, has been transforming.

One example is my awareness that I tend toward wishing instead of doing and accepting.  Doing and accepting brings a whole lot more happiness than wishing things were better, different, more, less.  Blogging a photo each day has let me practice feeling alright with imperfection and letting go of needing things to be complete and better and the best.  Doing something imperfectly gets a whole lot more done than not doing anything because it can't be perfect.  Making pictures has given me a chance to make mistakes and completely suck and still be OK.  Remarkably, that makes my spirit soar.

Making pictures gives me a chance to shine beauty and light into the world. 

Making pictures allows me to capture time, especially where my kids, family, and the changing seasons are concerned.

I’m also able to fiddle with the concept of impermanence and letting go, with trust and a sense of it is going to be alright.

Making pictures allows me to tell a story, show a feeling, share it…name it.

Making pictures fans my still small (but ever growing) inner fire of creativity.  I can learn at my own pace, developing confidence as I go.

It insulates me from the outer critic and quiets the inner critic.  I'm healing past wounds my budding inner artist suffered.  I have permission to just go ahead and give it a try.

The process of working with color, form, composition, storytelling, light, emotion, time, and setting is very powerful.  It is my art.  With it I can go deep or find lightness.

Making pictures has a social piece.  Sharing my photos in person, through my blog, on Flickr, Facebook and Twitter, provides me connection to others and some distance at the same time.  

 

It gives me a way to participate socially while honoring my challenges with vulnerability and commitment.  It can be scary and exhilarating to put myself “out there” in this way.  Photography is my path both in and out of that situation, and I get to decide which direction and when and how much.

Making pictures allows me to work with the concept of validation, external and internal.  It gives me frequent practice coming face to face with my need for external validation and shows me that happiness and peace come from internal validation.

Sometimes external and internal combine and I make a photo that resonates deeply in me as well as others.  That can be a heady feeling.  However, making a photo that speaks to me, and no one else, is absolutely A-OK.  Making a photo and not sharing it with anyone else can be rewarding in its own powerful way.  It doesn't need to be seen to be real.

And, more and more, through making pictures I continue cultivating wonder and joyfulness.

Wonder and joyfulness, joyfulness and wonder - coping, expression, focusing in, being in the moment, telling a story, getting lost in the flow of creativity, of capturing moments and light and beauty and finding the blessings in peace and in pain...that is why I make pictures.

Blogged for the class: Finding Your Eye .