Oct22
‘When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something.’ —Steve Jobs
How many of us can relate to this? This speaks to the way our minds work with regard to creativity–how we get our best ideas and how we evolve. In part it’s the ‘mindpop’ thing—the seemingly unbidden insight that pops into your head when not focusing on the subject. It’s not linear and in fact it often seems disconnected from effortful work. That’s why creative professionals often don’t look like we’re working—we get this. I once had a very nervous, very tight corporate client in my studio actually ask me when we were going to start working—she was so unused to that model of creative productivity. Creative thinking actually requires, after filling your head with as much information as you can, to step back, take a break, go do something unrelated to the work at hand. That’s where the true seeing comes in— the right brained, non linear, pattern seeing, fresh and spontaneous insights that really make a difference, that make things better. The work is everything that has led up to that moment….and the boldness to act on the insight….even though it didn’t feel like work.
Aug17
“Miracles…rest not so much upon…a healing power coming suddenly near from afar, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that, for a moment, our eyes can see….what is there around us always.” –Willa Cather
We spend so much time caught up in our turbulent—disturbulent mindsets that we miss so much around us. How restorative to our mind/body/spirit to simply take a moment to bring our attention to whatever beauty is unfolding around us….to know we always have a choice about what we pay attention to, to break our habitual mindsets. Awareness is available to us always. It’s a muscle we can exercise just like any other.
Jul02
I love NPR radio. There was recently an interview with Joshua Foer talking about his fantastic new book Moonwalking With Einstein: the Art and Science of Remembering Everything. The ‘art’ he refers to is based on a set of techniques invented in ancient Greece. The ‘art’ is in creating imagery in your mind that is so dense, so colorful, so unlike anything you’ve seen before that it’s unlikely to be forgotten. Seems it’s as much about creativity as it is about memory. In relation to the passing of time, he states as we get older our experiences become less unique, therefore more forgettable, increasing the sense of one year blending in to the next. He says that’s why it’s important to pack your life with interesting experiences that make life memorable and provide texture to the passing of time. A guy called in during the interview, a photographer, saying he can remember every picture he’s ever taken. I can as well. I can also remember what I was thinking and feeling at the time. Foer’s explanation was that we remember more in our area of expertise. I think he missed part of the truth: the act of seeing the image and clicking the shutter literally fixes the memory, and everything about the moment, in the mind’s eye. This is why photography can be a wonderful tool for enhancing experience, and memory— accessible to anyone. It helps us pay attention, helps us switch from automatic to conscious mode—enlivening the mundane, enriching the everyday.
Jun21
This is in the ‘as good as it gets’ category in the life of a freelance photographer. The very personal image on the right is, simply, my back porch shot on a rainy morning. Rain and mist offer wonderful visual opportunities for capturing evocative images. This one found it’s way to a much bigger audience, ending up as the cover to bestselling author Nicholas Sparks’ latest novel, shown on the right.
Jun17
Lesson #1: When on the streets of New York, always have your camera at the ready. Think The Sartorialist, a guy who built a huge career around this. I missed a great opportunity when a perfectly groomed fellow in summer white denim shorts, sunglasses, gelled coif sporting a loud pink t-shirt with lettering spanning the length and breadth of his body that read “TOUCH IS OVERRATED. FEEL WITH YOUR EYES” approached. Try to conjure him. He was a poster boy for this blog and I missed him! Synesthesia is the neurological condition of cross sensory perception. Among those that have it, when one sense is triggered it creates impulses in others (see ‘loud pink’ above). This leads to an intensifying of experience and therefore memory and perception. Kind of trippy…. and yet when it comes to seeing, I would imagine for most of us, our eyes are an instrument of feeling….certainly something to aspire to.
Jun14
I apologize for the lapse in my posting. I’ll spare you the reasons; hopefully some of them will become evident as I pick up this thread again. And thank you to all who have been so encouraging for me to continue (you know who you are!). Most recently I’ve been collaborating on a series of botanical images for a new website. Our challenge has been to bring a fresh set of eyes to these oft photographed elements. What is the essence of the thing? How do we reveal it? It’s a practice.
Dorothea Lange put it best: “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
Apr23
The big question this past year (or two) of reinvention has been ‘To what end?”. After a nice run as a commercial photographer with continued hankerings to produce art, I’ve found myself continually straddling the two realms, somewhat ill-defined; often paralyzed. Always have been, most likely always will be. I’m tired of asking myself the questions “Will this make money?”, “Is this art?” , or “Does this matter?”. I’ve decided to let go of the thinking part and just do. I feel lucky enough to know what gets me juiced, and hopefully will help get others on the same path (the ‘matters’ piece) That’s enough for me.
The fact is I’m always taking pictures. It’s what I do. Many never see the light of day because they don’t fit the box of my commercial career….so they accumulate in files and folders. Just for fun, in honor of Spring and to hell with the box, I’m putting a bunch of existing work here under this heading of projects. The following group is from a series shot on gloomy days while meditatively strolling around the property just after it rained.
Apr18
I’ve been paying a lot of attention to language lately—to the weight our words can carry. I’m enamored by words with nuances and multiple meanings; words that speak to much bigger ideas. True is such a simple little word, yet, as a directive for living our lives, it packs quite a punch. Truth seems to be a niggling problem for so many these days; lots of people getting into hot water over the absence of it in their lives. Among its meanings: ‘in accordance with fact or reality, accurate or exact, real, or rightly named’, and, in relation to construction, ‘in alignment, balanced, in correct position’. I expected the word ‘straight’ to apply; it doesn’t necessarily seem to, nor did the word ‘right’ ever come up—interesting. True also can mean loyal or faithful, as in a true friend. Another definition I recently came across is “something lived in the moment; an expression of the individual’s connection to the whole.” A person’s life can be true—undistorted, balanced. This will look different for each one of us. Seems we’re all working pretty hard at reconstructing—‘trueing’ ourselves these days. For me, ‘trueing’ myself takes the form of spending time in nature, in the studio with my camera, on a yoga mat, on a cushion, reading and writing. At the end of the day, all are attempts to be true, to get at the truth, to get real. How about you?
Mar18
6:30am—a rainy Manhattan morning, and still, as we were driving down upper Broadway for the early morning call at the flower market— sun still not up yet, this scene presented itself. A line of people wrapping around the block waiting for the Apple store to open its’ doors hours later in the hope of getting one of the couple hundred new Ipads delivered that day. The dreary darkness added this depression era feel.
Mar15
So the days are an hour longer, yet we ‘lost’ an hour Sunday. I’ll take the extra hour of daylight. Time is a funny thing–all hours are not equal. We’re always rushing around, saying we don’t have enough time, wasting a lot of time. For me it’s not about having more time, it’s about the quality of my time. Time can be full or empty. I just read somewhere that we spend 95% of our time thinking and 5% of our time being aware and fully present. Scary! All that thinking time is generally frustrating, having the human brains that we do which tend to ‘loop’ to the negative, fearful, habitual. This does not make us happy. Since learning about the concept of ‘flow’ as described by Mihalyi Csiksentmihalyi, who has written extensively on the subject since he first defined the term in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience—that feeling of being in the ‘zone’—totally immersed in an activity where time disappears, I continually try to adjust that percentage.
I can get there with some effort through yoga and meditation. I’m there when I’m photographing, always. I’m often there when I’m cooking, gardening, writing—creating something. I’m also there when swimming or hiking, and of course being with friends and loved ones. It’s about a balance between challenge and ease. The more hours we spend in ‘flow’ , the happier we will be. Time spent pursuing all forms of ‘pleasure’ does not necessarily make us happy. Time spent thinking about how to be happier does not make us happy. Time spent engaged, in flow, in love, in bliss, in the moment feels full, and enough.
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