I suddenly went from almost never reading to reading 45 books in a year. This blog post is about how to achieve that kind of result…I think.

I went from doing a job that I hated to a job that I loved.
I went from letting emails pile for months to answering on a 24 hour cycle.
I went from never keeping receipts to doing taxes monthly.
I went from being judgmental and difficult to easy going.

A week ago my husband said something to me that surprised me. He told me that one of the things he loves most about me is my willingness to change. I had never seen myself that way before, but since he saw it, I thought it was time to try. I asked for examples, and what I listed above is some of what he said.

Sometimes we are stubborn, difficult animals. We cling to who we are because that’s all we know. We don’t want to be surprised by the one thing we can control: ourselves.

I’ve always had a misplaced and singular view that I am right. About what, you might ask? Anything? Everything?
Anyone else ever feel that way?

…I felt certain about how we should feel, how we should act, what kind of life is the best life, what kind of life is the worst.

I didn’t listen to opinions very easily. I was not going to let myself be molded by someone else.

At some point in the last half a decade, I became savvy to the idea that there is always more to learn. I became obsessed with curiosity. I wanted to be better than the person I was. And I realized something important: In order to be a better person, I had to see myself from another vantage point.

I started to look at my life from a bird’s perspective…and since I’m a visual person, I mean that very literally. I pretended I was looking down at my life from above and I noted what I saw. What did my routines look like? How was I treating the people around me? Where did I spend most of my time, and for how long? Did I look good or unhealthy? What areas of my life were causing stress, and alternately, joy?

I am a big fan of the idea that having fewer amazing parts of your life is better than having many mediocre ones. I don’t keep a lot of close friends, I don’t have a lot of hobbies. Simply put, I don’t make time for what doesn’t serve me.

How, then, do I know what serves me?

1. Give yourself an honesty pep-talk. Being honest with yourself is extremely difficult. It means that you have to acknowledge years of expectations (your own and others) and be willing to throw them away. It means you have to be willing to take chances where before you would never. Honesty is a difficult thing. It is much easier to keep living a lie than to shift into a space of truth. The moment you admit the truth, it becomes real.
2. Write a list of ONLY 3 priorities. Hint: It is okay for money to be one of them. How much money, however, is up for debate. Your lifestyle and what you’re used to may not factor in anymore. If you had to limit yourself to only 3 priorities in your life – the ones that give you the most joy – what are they? Mine are: Creativity, Conversation, Home.
3. Imagine yourself on your deathbed. Really – imagine that you are an old man or woman and you’ve made it to the other side of this life, the finish line. You’re happy and relatively healthy and you’re looking back at what you’ve done. What does it look like? What did your life shape up to be? What events defined it? What choices moved it forward? When you examine your best life (note, not said in the offhanded way that I’ve been seeing a lot of) can you map out the decisions that need to take place to get you there?

Once you’ve figured out what serves you, it’s time to change. I mean really change.

I’m very fortunate because commitment has always been high on my short strengths list. When my husband and I decided at 16 that we wanted to get married, we were dead serious (we’ve been together 15 years this year). When I decided I wanted to quit my job and become a photographer, I did it fast and I did it wholeheartedly (that was 8 years ago). When I switched from an entirely meat-eating diet to vegan overnight, it was not so much a choice as a compulsion (that was 6 years ago). I can commit.

But when I break down why I’m able to commit, it has less to do with natural abilities and more to do with vision. I can commit to something because I can see the future.

Not like a psychic. More like an old soul.

It is very easy for me to see a choice and then see how the consequences of each choice will impact my life. If this doesn’t come easy for you, I recommend getting trained up in the ways of visionary know-how. This is not to say I always get it right (who does?) but that I work at it a lot.

How do we become more proficient in seeing our future?

We dream. We dream often, we dream big, we dream small, we manifest.

That might sound crazy but it is the truth. If we take time to think about the questions I asked above, about our priorities and our wishes and our lives, we start to understand exactly the type of life we want to live. That knowledge becomes available to us in ways that it wasn’t before. It becomes a part of who we are and will be. Dreaming shapes our future so that when we get there, we’re ready.

Here is something predictable about humans: the more we sit with something, the more comfortable we become. Unless it’s clowns.

If we let an idea settle in our minds, it becomes less and less intimidating to carry out. If we keep the same friends for a long time, we become comfortable. If we do the same job for years, we find ourselves in a routine.

The natural conclusion, then, is this: If you let yourself dream of your perfect life often enough, then taking the steps to actually achieve it are more likely to happen. It has already happened in your mind plenty of times like practice runs.

How did I start reading 45 books a year?

I forced myself to look honestly at what I wanted in my life.
I wrote down my priorities.
I shaped my life.

All to make time for reading.

(The background of this is that I want to be a writer, and I believed I needed to be a reader to be a good writer, so I made a change that would lead to my successful future).

So you see, it was never about reading. It was about what I value in my life, where I want my life to go, and how I want to get there.

Creativity
Conversation
Home

All three of those priorities point me in the direction I need to go. For every idea I have, I ask myself this simple question: Does this idea serve one or more of my three priorities? If yes, I move forward. If not, I let it go.

What serves you?
I’d really like to hear your feelings on this topic.

Today the image was inspired by the incomparable ParkeHarrisons, Joel Robison, and my long-standing obsession with umbrellas. Ever since 2010 I’ve felt very connected to the umbrella as a symbol. I watched as most everyone in my life sought shelter from their own personal storms – life, all of it’s hardships, fears, anxieties – they wanted so much to be protected from them. I wanted the opposite; not always because it was fun, but because I had this unending feeling in my stomach telling me to embrace what is uncomfortable.

I remember being in Paris and running along the water as a storm broke out. I was filled with joy like never before. I wanted to splash in every puddle, to be soaked, to feel it in my bones. I looked back and my friend was huddled by a tree yelling at me to stop and to keep dry. I had never felt so disconnected.

I remember being in Amsterdam with thunder bursting all around. I looked at my friend and asked her to go outside with me, and she did. We ran to the nearby docks and sat on their edge, feet in the water, rain pouring down, and we both still look back at that moment as one of the most important in our friendship.

Everyday that it rains here at home I can’t help but run outside. Even my husband comes to get me if I haven’t showed myself at the start, just to make sure I know. I love the rain, the storm clouds. When I give things a rating from 1-10, I simply say “clouds” if it is off-the-charts good. But not those white, fluffy clouds; I mean the evil storm clouds.

When I make a decision, I ask myself if I am carrying an umbrella or not. If I am, I know I am playing it safe. I know I need to let go of what keeps me sheltered to fully immerse myself in the experience.

Today I noticed an umbrella in my car. I asked how long it has been there – 3 years, I was told. I hadn’t noticed. I pulled it out and opened it up, and to my delight, every bar was bent and every clasp broken. I smiled, threw it in the trash, and created this image.

Come hell or high water, I’m in this life entirely.

How many people live inside of us? How many versions of ourselves are waiting to be born, grow their voice, and take control of what they (and they alone) know is coming? Some of us wait and then struggle fiercely against the loss of that person we have known so intimately. For me, she dances away easily as though off to a place she’ll never come back from. I don’t mind watching her go. But others of us hold on to our skin so tightly, suffocating it, willing it to please, please stay where you are and be the same and never change.

It hurts us to become someone else, especially when who we always thought we would be is a distant memory kept alive by pure hope. We feel our skin unzipping to that slow uneasy click, click, click and we reach to hold it together. Our compulsions are too empty of meaning.

Yesterday I started editing some images I had shot a few weeks back with no notion of if they would work out or not. I pulled old stock images I had taken years ago combined with one that I purchased online as well and started playing. My friend Dave Junion is always telling me to play in my craft. It is too easy to be too serious. We put such pressure on ourselves to create something good that we lose sight of the fact that what is good now won’t be good later. And, that if we continue to create what we feel is good we will never progress to what is better.

That said, yesterday I played. I played from morning until night and then this morning again, working on this image, not caring if it turned into something or not. I followed my vision, made a few changes, and experimented. All-in-all this edit took a few hours which I recorded and condensed into one minute, so chunks of the process are missing. Notably, the cutting of the various figures to fit into the scene.

This image is called “Contact”. My fascination with two worlds colliding has been growing and growing ever since I started reading Myst. Have any of you read it? It was my husband’s favorite book series (and game) for a long time and I never got around to digesting it. Now it is all I can think about. The premise of the book being that there is an underground race of people who can create new worlds. Pretty much right up my ally.

I hope you enjoy this speed edit! Let me know if there is anything else you’d like to see me share!

Image: “Contact”, self-portrait (x6)
Music: “An Old Picture” by Above Envy

I’m in the midst of creating a new video series, so while I process those thoughts and do some shooting for it, I thought I would share this little speed edit video! I recorded my editing process on a whim last week. It was a fun one to edit, and if you look closely you can see a couple of instances where I tried something and doubled back when it didn’t work. I love exploring through editing; trying one piece here or there and moving it around until it fits. That is the greatest thing about compositing – being able to explore visually while trying to create your most authentic vision.

Music: “Halation” by Evolv, licensed from SongFreedom

Since I didn’t shoot this underwater (I have yet to master the underwater self-portrait), it didn’t quite matter where I shot it so I opted for my usual blank wall outside. The natural light emulated the natural conditions in the world of the image, and the coloring was neutral enough that I could blend with it.

There are always many layers to think about with a composite like this. The most important one right away is making sure the focal points match as well as the lighting. Both of those things can be shifted slightly, which I did do in this edit, but for the most part they matched. Another consideration is color and making sure everything looks like it was in the same world.

The main tools I used in this edit were the background eraser tool, replace color, and toggling of blending modes. This video is about 2 hours of editing sped up to a couple of minutes, with roughly another 45 minutes that I cut out totally. All in all, it was about a 3 hour edit. I hope you enjoy!

“Let It Go”
Self-portrait
March 2017

Is there a part of my process you would like to see featured in a video? Just let me know!

…

If you want to learn some of these techniques in person, plus a whole lot more, take a look at my upcoming events!

For months, maybe even years, after I started taking pictures I longed for a day when my style would be consistent. Just when I thought I’d reached that point a gallery would tell me they are too different. And on days when I felt all over the place, someone would email me to say that all of my images look the same. It forced me to question why I so longed for images that were consistent from one to the next. The answer is one that most artists feel – a need to accurately convey their message. That ability often comes in the form of creating consistent work.

As I continued journeying through photography, my goal of creating works that were tightly related changed. I started putting more value on creativity and less on art. I put more emphasis on what it felt like to make my imagination come to life rather than thinking only of what it would look like in the end. I became obsessed with the idea that art does not have to look like any one thing. It should not be dictated by the people viewing it or buying it.

A couple years ago I looked at my portfolio and it felt stuck. It felt like someone had put up a roadblock and instead of finding a way around it, I simply built the same image over and over again. I hoped to find a way around it but instead I wasn’t able to see anything beyond it.

No longer did I just want to be creative, or express my imagination. I wanted to do so bravely. I would rather create with bravery than with fear. I wanted to create in ways that made me nervous, or that made me fear being misunderstood, or that invited criticism. This new image reminded me of that in the simplest way – visually. I have always been afraid of photographing backlight – such a simple thing, but something I was never comfortable with. And so I started last year and I continue on that little journey as a personal kick-in-the-pants.

I know that I, as an artist, get so caught up in doing things the “right” way or producing work that is consistent that I forget not to take it all so seriously. Who cares if everything we produce isn’t perfect? Or even good? Who cares if we experiment? Are we any less an artist because of it? I would say we are even more so.

Find your style – yes. Find your voice, and use it. Find the message that, beyond all other messages, is yours to tell. But never let yourself be trapped by those constraints. Let them be guides in the darkness that is the artistic path.

Surprise yourself. Let yourself down. Pick yourself up. Search. Do.

When was the last time you challenged yourself, and how?

This is what my Promoting Passion Convention is about – putting the journey before the image. Growing. Experimenting. And finding others who are on similar paths. I hope you can join us!

Promoting Passion Convention
Colorado Springs, CO
September 27-29, 2016
$350

The early bird special ends Wednesday and the price will raise to $390!

]]> https://www.promotingpassion.com/speed-edit-for-withdrawal/feed/ 4 https://www.promotingpassion.com/promoting-passion-week-63-create-your-dreams/ https://www.promotingpassion.com/promoting-passion-week-63-create-your-dreams/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2015 22:09:15 +0000 http://www.promotingpassion.com/?p=2707 Read More Read More

Isn’t int incredible how much we can do? I haven’t scratched the surface of what could be done to bring my imagination to life, and thinking about the possibilities makes me giddy with excitement. I can go out and create something singlehandedly that could express what words cannot. I say “I” selfishly as I write on my own blog, but of course I mean that to extend to all people with any craft. Photography allows me a medium in which I feel comfortable working. But I believe that anything in life that allows you to feel complete and understood is an art form.

Creating this image was fun and simple. I love pictures like that. No crazy setup (aside from dragging all of these vines into an abandoned seminary). No strange Photoshop work of putting body parts together. No flying girls or anything “fancy”. Just a girl standing trapped (or maybe willingly blended) into the scene. It felt, to me, the right kind of simple for what I wanted to say.

What does your fantasy world look like? If you could wake up and see anything, hear anything, smell anything…what would it be? Do you work to create that reality?

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You can watch the creation process of this image, and some of the editing slowed down, on my creativeLIVE class “Master Your Craft” – you can look at both of my cL classes in the STORE on this blog.

Special thanks to Jane Love for modeling, Nikoma Souza for hair/makeup, and the whole creativeLIVE team for just plain being amazing and allowing me to do this.

This new video is all about the new year. Admittedly I rambled a bit, but I wanted to speak from the heart and just put it all out there on this one. The others will be tighter though! So for this video we deal with a new year, new dreams and aspirations, and I share a photo that I created with those things in mind, including a speed edit of that image.

If you’ll share your new year’s resolutions with me I’d love to hear them because my biggest motivations in life included inspiration itself, and I just love hearing the motivations and dreams of others. Thank you for inspiring me now and always, I take that with me into the new year feeling like anything is possible.