Opportunity?

Success?

The right moment?

It is so easy to wait. I fall into this trap regularly. I think to myself, “This isn’t a good time, surely things will get better.” Or I say, “I’ll wait to do this until I have more _________,” insert whatever word fits for you: money, time, energy, hope, help, tools, gear, etc.

There are many things I’ve put off in my life. Making a documentary. Creating a fine art book. Publishing my novel. Just to name a few.

But at the same time, there are many things I have done. I am not someone who sits and counts the seconds on the clock. I ignore the clock entirely, most days. I do what feels right despite the risk. I am, at heart, a perpetual risk-taker.

But even those of us whose brains seemed to be blocked from whatever tells us something is dangerous, it still creeps in.

That is how I know it must for other people, too. I make excuses, though I like to think of myself as someone who doesn’t. We all do.

But what if we didn’t? What if we didn’t need the life raft that excuses let us hold on to and instead we swam, for dear life, to the place where our dreams dwell?

Where would you end up?

Where would you end up if you
let go of your life raft and swam?

I am the first person to say that my images do not reflect my personal life. Yet in a way, that is not wholly true. I do not take personal experiences and translate them into images. I do not take an emotion I might be feeling one day and turn that into an image for a release. I do, however, internalize all of my emotions as life goes on and I turn those into inspiration for images in the future.

This picture that I did recently is a great example of this. I learn from my life and I turn those lessons into visual ways of connecting with others. I did not create this picture to heal myself; I created it to show that we all feel this way sometimes. “This way” is not one specific thing. Being able to understand our emotions and turn those into symbols is a powerful way of relating to the world.

Now, an emotion I once felt is no longer simply an abstract emotion. It has physical representation: form, color, location. By assigning those identifiable, physical attributes to an emotion, the emotion is now translated into many languages and cultures. We can understand our collective feelings by looking at images that reflect those emotions.

To have wings. To lose wings. To use someone else to lift us up. To allow others to help. To demand help. To hurt others to help ourselves.

All of these ideas went into the making of this image, and depending on your world view or state of mind, any of them could equally apply. There was a time when I felt that I couldn’t fly any higher, that I was about to fall. I wished for wings then. There have been times when I needed someone to lift me up, and I found them. There were times when I felt my well being was more important than other living creatures and so I used them to serve me. More and more I try to be like the butterflies, lifting others and myself all the while.

What does the world look like from your point of view? How can you get others to understand that through a visual medium? What symbols are important and present in your life? What do you want the world to understand?

I shot this on top of a rock and wasn’t very concerned with the background as I knew I wanted to create a separation of sky and fabric. It went very quickly, taking about 15 minutes from the time I parked to when I cleaned up, and I was feeling really good about the images.

When I got them into Photoshop that night, pieces started coming together. I went through a process to create a more painterly effect, and when I was finished…I didn’t like it at all. I felt like my vision wasn’t coming together despite the fact that I did everything I had planned.

“The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry…”

And such is life. You have a plan, you execute that plan exactly, and then you wait to reap the rewards. But sometimes they don’t come, and that’s okay. That is not failure but instead an opportunity to do more, to do better, to create something more fulfilling for yourself.

I slept on the image and decided to take a fresh look the next day. And when I did, it all made sense. I had to alter my vision slightly, but only a nudge from where it had been. I added just a couple of details and it started to come together. My imagination was feeling very happy.

And that was when I decided to just let go and have fun. I created 5 new layers of the same image in Photoshop, and then changed the colors drastically on each layer. Slowly I peeled back the colors to see which I liked best, and landed on red. It was the opposite of what I had envisioned. I specifically bought a certain color parasol and fabric just so that I could execute this calming concept, to create an ocean-like effect.

Yet when the red popped up, it instantly felt more painterly, as if it flowed more naturally. I felt I understood the character better, because even if you are the creator of a character that person can still change and grow if you allow it. And when I settled on the red, and let the red become the new image, it felt finished.

Allow your life to lead you where it will. Have goals and desires and wishes, yet know when to trust your instincts. If something isn’t working, ask yourself why. If you don’t know why, come back to it later. And if you never come back to it, be confident you will move on to bigger ideas that let your heart pulse.

Everything is a process.

Enjoy it.

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