Six Windows

I struggled to pick up my camera in September. After 365 days of daily photos, what could I possibly photograph that I hadn't already?

There is nothing wrong with taking a break when you feel burned out, but I also didn't want to let a year of hard work slip away for too long either. Thankfully at the eleventh hour a challenge came my way via David duChemin and The Compelling Frame course that I started last year.

The challenge was:

• Choose one idea, theme or subject.
• Choose some constraints.
• Make photographs in September
• Chose the six best at the end of the month and post them in the group.

I loved the idea, but struggled to find the subject. I just spent a year shooting whatever I fancied. The only constraint the Lensbaby Velvet 56. I decided to look back at my 365 project as a whole and see what subjects jumped out at me. There were a few different ones, but two that kept reoccurring were windows and reflections.

I needed to talk through the challenge with a friend. So in one of our weekly Skype sessions I hashed through it with my friend Lee. She said she had once done a window project for an on-line course, as did a mutual friend of ours. She sent me the link to the blog post she did on windows, as well as the link to our friend's blog post. Both of them encouraged me. I decided to do windows.

I started out strong with a photo walk in my downtown. So many great buildings and windows. But then that ugly "middle" came. I couldn't find any more good windows. I only had three so far, and those weren't even taken with the constraint I had chosen - my 60mm macro lens, a once favorite lens.

In the "middle", I played many games with myself to get through it. What if I set the timer on my phone and stopped every five minutes to take a detail shot of something? That worked for one morning, again yielding three decent photos. I didn't feel like playing the game again.

The windows still called to my soul.

Then, an unexpected trip to my personal heaven - northern Michigan. My husband had to go for work for three whole days, which meant I had three days to photograph windows in all the places I love.

Bravely, I posted the six finalists in The Compelling Frame FB group. The windows were well received. One comment especially stirred me. Cynthia said, "Great glimpses into what feels like looking into other worlds, both moving forward and looking back."

In the waining days of September, I found all the windows I needed and so much more.

Endless Winter

I tend to be a glass half-full kind of person. But, lately even my rose-colored glasses have begun to slip. Here we are almost a month into spring, and the number of days I have not had to wear my winter coat is exactly one.

Granted, the last time I had to snowblow the driveway was in February, but still each week there is another white reminder of the season past. Either flakes in the air or a coating on the ground. At this point, if I could just take a walk without wearing my mittens I would be really happy.

I think this weariness of white made me choose my #the100dayproject prematurely. Every April the organized project starts (you can read about it here). I have declared a project each year since 2015, but only completed one. Failure never stops me from trying again. This year's project was to be #100daysofcolorhunting and I made it ten days before I grew weary of it.

So what about the other ninety days? Well...what I should have done in the first place is declared I was doing a project, but then let it evolve in its own time. I thought I wanted color, but I didn't ask myself the right question...that question should have been: What do I want to learn?

On the eleventh day while walking at the beach, I realized that yes I desperately need color in my life, but I want to learn more about filmmaking, and in particular filmmaking with my iPhone. What held me back from declaring this project in the first place is knowing I can not produce a film every single day. But I can shoot clips everyday, and some days I can put them into a 15-30 second film, and some days all I can do is share one quick clip, and that's ok.

I have been experimenting with an app FILMic Pro that gives me so much more control than the native camera. I want to learn that app. There is also an app Lumafusion for editing that I want to learn, but for the moment things will remain edited in iMovie. No point in overwhelming myself, one step at a time.

So the revised project is #100daysofmorningscenes. I am a morning person, that is when I am most creative. Just like my 365 Project, where I can look back and see where I have been in the last year. It will be fun to look back at these 100 days and see what my mornings have been filled with.

Be True

Why do we find it so hard to be true to ourselves?

My daughter recently stumbled upon a podcast called Makers and Mystics and shared it with me. In Season 2, Episodes 10 & 11, the host of the podcast, Stephen Roach, interviews one of our family's favorite musical creatives, Josh Garrels. We have all of Josh's music and have been fortunate enough to see him in concert numerous times. In the interview Josh talks about how he has remained true to himself, his family and his calling, by choosing to remain independent, even though signing with a major record label would have made his, and his family's, life so much easier. 

I have been pondering Josh's words for the last month. 

I have not been very present in this space this month, but I have been busy. I am putting the finishing touches on my website, and hope to have that live very soon. The class I am taking to build it, offered by artist Ivy Newport's husband, Chris, has been invaluable in building my Squarespace website. But the place I have struggled in staying true to myself is when the course talks about adding on-line classes to my website, and setting up e-commerce. As we walk through the different lessons, I think:  yes, I should have these things. 

But...if I am honest with myself, I don't want these things. 

The truest me does not want to be sitting at my desk creating class content and recording videos. I don't want to have to manage orders and shipping of product. I want to be out in the meadow in my paisley rain boots, or wandering the shoreline in my red Taos shoes. I want to be out, not in. 

But it is easy to listen to the admirers, to the supportive family, who are my biggest cheerleaders and are saying, "You should be selling your work".

Last weekend, I was reading the latest issue of Lenswork magazine (No. 131, August 2017) and the article The Best Time Ever by Brooks Jensen had some very interesting points that fueled my pondering...

"...I have often thought it odd that so many photographers are seduced by the idea of selling their work. Why? To those of you who play golf, garden, fish, knit, cook, or play an instrument, are you equally driven to turn your enjoyable past time into an income-driven career? All of those hobbies are just as expensive as photography, but I don't find many who are as tempted as photographers to find some way to subsidize their hobby with a professional income stream."

But it is later in the article that Brooks' words echoed the feelings in my own heart...

"This does bring us to the knotty problem of why we do our photography. Seriously, why are you a photographer? We each have our answers and they are all correctly a matter of personal choice. I decided a long time ago that my purpose for doing all this work (and spending all this time and money) is two-fold: first, for strictly internal motivations of personal growth, and a means to explore the world; second, to share my creative vision and production with the world as much as I can. Notice there is nothing in either of those goals that would necessarily lead me into the world of commerce as my first choice -- or for that matter, my second, third, or fourth choice."

Amen.

Photography began for me as a way to find out who I was, not Glen's wife, not Mallory's mom, but Sarah. It has richly blessed me in the discoveries it has led to. It has allowed me the freedom to explore both close to home and farther abroad. It is the common interest shared among my creative friends, friends that I never would have met otherwise. It has brought my husband and I closer as we share, learn, laugh and gather stories together. It will probably never make me rich,  at least not monetarily, and I am completely okay with that. 

I need other people to create on-line classes, because I love taking them and learning. But I will continue to share my gifts and talents freely, through my pictures and words, and know that I am staying true to myself by doing that.