In the midst of an insanely busy fall season, my darling friend Amy Parrish came to visit. She brought with her hugs and giggles, stories of her travels, and this beauty: a Yashica Mat 124 G camera, that she was just learning how to use. I asked to join in the adventure and we set off on a hike with a poofy dress and mud squishing between our toes.

I admittedly don’t know a lot about film, and the simple not-knowing that we all experience about countless things is too often what stops us from exploring them. I try to embrace the attitude of being willing to learn. After all, there was a time I had no idea how to work my digital camera – how to write, read, form sentences… The more ways we learn to express ourselves, the more outlets we have to be freely ourselves.

I took a film class in high school. The class and I didn’t get on too well. I didn’t follow the rules very closely, I didn’t enjoy the darkroom experience, and I decided I’d never be a photographer. Clearly that didn’t stick. And now, as I pick up a medium format film camera, I can’t help but think of that girl who wrote off photography because of one bad experience. I don’t want to be that person ever, ever again. I want to try everything at least twice. I want to fail at least once.

As Amy taught me how to focus, how to load and wind the film, and each detail that goes into the process, I started thinking about my professors in college. They were film purists, didn’t believe much in digital alteration, and taught me a lot about motion picture film. Because of my experience in film school, I have often brought a sense of preparedness to my digital ways. I took those same skills back to my film roots, this time shooting stills for the first time since I was 16.

I kept remembering film shooters saying that it is best to over-expose your film rather than under, if you are going to do one or the other. I know a lot of rules, but I don’t follow them frequently. I decided I was going to shoot the film intuitively, instead of how I was “supposed” to, so I slightly underexposed each image. Part of that was necessity. It was dark in the forested area where we were shooting and I was toggling between 1/15 and 1/30 shutter speed, which was getting dangerously low for hand-held shooting.

We were positioned in the mud for my little series, so propping the camera up was out of the question. Amy held the camera for me after I composed and if the focus looked off, she fixed it for me. I told her when to click, and she clicked. I owe so much to Amy for sharing that experience with me – for getting muddy and adventuring and letting me be a part of her new creativity.

I tried out some slight editing in Photoshop to tinge them a little more to my color palette. I always have this problem, when I really like an image SOOC (straight out of camera), that I don’t know quite what to do with it. It just feels right. But these felt like they could be taken a little more out of reality, so I colored them.

Friends, keep trying new things. And remind me to try new things, too. We gravitate to comfort so often that we forget the exhilaration of newness. We are so afraid of being bad at something that we can’t see how incredible it is to get good at something. I used to think that growing up meant finally being good at what you are supposed to be doing. How wrong I was. Growing up means embracing the unknown and doing it anyway. As it should be, for an artist to grow.

We become scared to share our work with others because we fear we will have to answer to someone about why we create, or how we create, or about the decisions that went into creating. It is a wonderful to know these things for ourselves, but we never have to answer to anyone about why we do what we do. That is personal and no one can demand the answers of us.

I personally love sharing the why especially. I don’t like laying out a whole story necessarily about the meanings behind the image, but I do love sharing my inspirations and thoughts behind my pictures. That does not mean, however, that I like to defend myself. I love for people to have their own opinions. I think it’s quite interesting when someone dislikes a picture, just the same as when someone likes it. And the reason I feel that I can separate myself from critique is because I understand that I don’t have to answer to anyone.

Opinions are not fact, yet so often we take them as such. We allow the thoughts of others to penetrate our own and suddenly we believe them as though they are fact. This is something that happens to most people at one time or another. It has happened to me. I’ve never met someone who this hasn’t happened to. And it is no one’s fault in particular. If we only blame those who use negativity as a driving force in their lives, we are no better.

We must understand that how we perceive and react to a situation is under our control. Someone may not like what you do. Someone may criticize what you do. Someone may say something mean about what you do. Yet that does not mean that we must take all of those things at face value.

If we understand that we do not have to answer to anyone else…if we understand that we can choose to react in any way we want to a situation…if we understand that our own opinions should be held at a higher standard…then we might be able to break free of those things that hold us back in creating our art.

It is good to be confident in what you do – to like it and feel the power in it. Because even though we can all grow and learn, we should understand that where we are right now is a great place to be: moving forward and taking control of our circumstance. So tell me, what do you love about what you do? Leave a comment letting me know, and a link to your work if you’d like to share.

Own it! Be confident in your craft. Know your worth and find solace in it. And remember that it is a great thing to understand why you create, but that you never have to share that with anyone but yourself.

*I love exploring the dark side of my imagination and I am resolved that if an image is too dark for someone’s taste, I will not apologize. I will recognize the difference between us and appreciate our uniqueness.*