seeds

kirk told me that I need to put my energy into my art. I waste a lot of mental and creative energy just...thinking.

i agree, but then i look at other posts and i disagree. the thinking can help. and the thinking can be important. but i need to just DO.

on another note, I love holgas, polaroids, lensbabies, and southeastern camera in carrboro.

cool light from the day we went to the city and to the fields

december parties, 50mm fun.

deep thinking

"We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone...Instead you spend your time being aware of things and meditating on them. On sights and sounds, on the mood of the weather and things remembered, on the machine and the countryside you're in, thinking about things at great leisure and length without being hurried and without feeling you're losing time." --Pirsig, from zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance."

I've been thinking a lot about photography lately. Sometimes my over-analytical mind can get the most of me, but recently I've been contemplating the merits of, well, thinking. While making pictures is an important part of the art, it's probably only 10% of the work. If I didn't read books, have conversations with other artists, journal, and pray I don't think my photography would be where it is now. I feel like so many photographers these days can be "snap-shot" photographers...shutter happy and relying too much on the post-production. What about the pre-production? What about using your mind? What about using your heart and letting that shape what you see?

It's a very circular, organic process. You find something beautiful- a dilapidated barn, a morning frost, a laughing roommate, an interesting reflection, a moment- and isolate it in time. You make a photograph. You make many photographs. Then you put the camera down for awhile and carry on life...broadening your horizons in the nitty-gritty realities...having good conversations, reading under a tree, eating with the family. You bring all these things to your photography and bring your photography to these things. Then you go back an edit your pictures later. It's a brutal process, like being naked in a room...you see all your flaws in your art and get frustrated that your vision didn't translate as beautifully, as transparently in your film. You think some more. You read some more, underlining texts and letting new thoughts enter. Letting them steep. Then you let inspiration guide you and you make more photograph. It's a circle. There aren't twelve easy steps, but many overlapping parts. That's why I say I'm a photographer even when I put my camera down.

Then again, I think there is a lot of fear in there...because maybe I don't pick up my camera enough. I'm not that girl who always totes her camera. I tried it for awhile...I can be that in spurts. But I get tired of it...because I need to go think. Maybe I'm too comfortable doing that.

more from wilmington

i had a really good conversation with crystal, pat's TA for 480, back in october when i was experiencing a dearth in creativity. She told me that traveling is her way of finding rejuvenation. wilmington provided that for me...that escape from the mundane. Not that chapel hill is boring...it's just all the beautiful things around me soon become lackluster because I see them over and over again. I'm sure if I lived in Wilmington I wouldn't see the same way I do when I just visit the place. That's the funny thing..."seeing" is really just a certain state of mind, of heart, and traveling seems to open my eyes to light.

shots from wilmington

about time for a photo blog

As I've delved deeper into my relationship with photography I've been surprised to find it's like any relationship: full of peaks and troughs. This past semester photography and I weren't doing so well...we were far from "breaking up," but I had a lot of qualms with him and experienced a long dry spell. I'm coming out of it a stronger person, but I feel the need to proactively rekindle my love of this art. I hope to attain a certain level of accountability by this blog. And I hope to bare my soul to you as I relate to the world around me, and as I relate to photography.