I photographed three images this week that I sort of liked. It was the only creative thing I accomplished all week. All images consist of three exposures on one frame. As I was walking my dog this week, I noticed that Spring is in full bloom everywhere and it is stunning. It is stunning in the sun and in the rain. No matter the weather, beauty is everywhere.
Generally, I am not interested in photographing botanicals, but I love the effect of taking multiple exposures. Anything can be made more interesting, layered, and textured through the use of multiple exposure. You never know what you are going to get, and if you photograph the same subject multiple times in a row, the image often gains a painterly quality.
In truth, I was working on a very different post to be sent out, the first of a new series I have been preparing for this publication. I like the idea of writing and publishing multiple essays around the same topic. The first series that I published on here was called “Searching For Home”, a collection of personal reflections and stories.
The first post for this new series was scheduled to be sent out today, but it didn’t come together. I stared at a blank page for hours, and when I finally forced myself to persist until I reach 500 words or more, I re-read it all and thought, “What crap, I definitely cannot share this.”
The reality is that creating week after week includes a lot of mediocrity. The reality is that the creative process consists of many mediocre and even bad images or bad sentences. The reality is that most of the time the creative process is not fun. It is a lot of work that consists of frustration and failure and plenty of self doubt. But it’s after failure and frustration that the real and hardest work of an artist starts. After failure and frustration comes the redoing, reworking, retrying, and retaking until you get it right. And it takes time. According to Rilke, patience is of the essence. Patience is everything.
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
So, why do I stick to a publishing schedule, you might ask?
Because a publishing schedule works for me. A publishing schedule makes me sit down and forces me to try again and to not give up. A publishing schedule gives me the necessary discipline to take what I do seriously. A publishing schedule helps me to be real and honest with myself and others.
Rick Rubin talks about the creative process as structure and discipline mixed with a healthy dose of play and surprise. If we only focus on play and surprise, we would not get much work done. If we only focused on structure and discipline, it would take out the creativity and joy and make everything stale. The creative process is a mixture of all four ingredients, all equally necessary. Failure comes with this process. And these ingredients are necessary to overcome failure and keep going.
“Failure is the information you need to get where you’re going.”
―Rick Rubin,The Creative Act: A Way of Being
In short, I could have opted not to sent out a letter today. It would have been perfectly fine. No big deal. But I thought my experience of this week would be worth sharing, because this experience is a universal experience of being an artist, of being a human.
And, above all, the experience of being human is what I this publication is all about.
Until next week,
Manuela
P.S.: I am working on a series on grief and loss. And while this is not exactly a cheerful and happy topic, I believe it is important and it is human. Despite the heaviness of the topic, I promise to keep it beautiful.
I think this was an important post: to us artists, but also for people who aren‘t. Making art isn‘t just all fun and play. It is hard work, takes a lot of time and effort, discipline and learning to deal with failure. Glad you didn‘t skip this week!
those are only few photos but i hope will help you to find inspiration and encourage you to talk about these feelings
https://open.substack.com/pub/perfectlight/p/lost?r=2b8uel&utm_medium=ios