For a long time, I pursued photography with an enthusiasm and excitement that I’ve barely felt in the last few years. I’ve lost something. I know I’ve lost something. I lost it somewhere along the way while in college. The raw enthusiasm and the ability to just go out and make new images at any given time and love every second of it.
I still love photography, yes, but there’s something about how I interact with it that has changed. Something in my mindset and method. Something about majoring in photography and devoting myself to the commercial application of photography has changed it for me.
There is something revealing in what one of my professors said to me once when I was in his office talking to him. While I cannot recall the wording, exactly, he said, essentially, that for someone like me, it can almost be counterproductive to major in the thing I love most. That is, sometimes rather than encouraging the creative urge, a liberal arts environment coupled a concentration on the thing you love can actually stifle the creative urge in certain people. I definitely fall into that group.
Put certain types of operative restrictions on me and I fall apart. Put certain types of limits on how I can pursue photography, and I can’t produce at a level or with the consistency that I might be capable of otherwise.
Maybe the key is to make sure that, one way or another, you’re enjoying making the images that you’re producing. If you aren’t enjoying the process, you aren’t going to come up with final results that are as good as they could be. Maybe enjoying it isn’t even quite it. Perhaps it would be better to say that the key is the ability to willingly put a part of yourself into what you are doing. It can be fun, it can be cathartic, it can be painful. But if you can willingly invest yourself in what you do, that will make all the difference in the world. The subconscious mind is an incredible powerhouse, but it can’t very well help you make great new work if you keep it completely insulated and separated from the creative process.
The creative part of me has become to jaded and cynical for its own good. When I could see the world through my camera with a sense of amazement, that’s always when I made my best work. It used to happen all the time. Now it happens only occasionally. That is an improvement, however, as for a period of probably at least six months, I didn’t even want to touch my cameras, let alone take them out and make new images on a daily basis. When I graduated from college, I was burned out, creatively speaking. Totally and completely running on empty. I couldn’t create, I didn’t want to create. And that creative void was like an open sore. It hurt, it irritated the hell out of me. Somehow, the thing I most loved to do had been transformed into the last thing I wanted to do.
I am slowly recovering from this burn-out, but it’ll be a while longer, I think, before I can go after photography like I did before. Moving to Chicago was one important step in this process. It marked a clear change in my life and acted as something I could take as a new beginning of sorts. A good benchmark by which to measure my progress. What really got me started towards recovery, though, was going down to Calumet Photo on Cherry St and getting that Nikon F3P and 50mm f/1.2 lens. It’s still sitting there on my credit card bill (which is only very slowly getting paid off), but it was worth it. It gave me a sense of freedom in shooting that I haven’t felt in a long time. It’s portable, it’s rugged, and the lens is so fast that it means I can shoot in pretty much any light. And so, as long as I have it with me, when I see a photograph I can make it. The cost of film is so low, per exposure, too, that I don’t have to worry about it like I would with 4×5 or 8×10, when you’re spending a couple bucks every time you click the shutter.
But what’s next? Shooting like this is helping me slowly improve, but there’s got to be something else to act as a catalyst and get the ball rolling a little faster. With luck, meditation will do the trick. I’m slowly getting into the habit of working on my zazen. I still pretty much suck at it, but I am slowly making some progress. It makes sense, I suppose. My mind is constantly in overdrive – I’ve likened the inside of my head to an old lecture room with poor acoustics filled with half-senile old professors all talking over one another. Zazen is nothing. As in no thought – cleared mind. Getting from my normal state of mind to that isn’t going to be easy, but I think it will help me and my creative efforts immensely. Anything to get closer to the subconscious mind.
But this still can’t nail down what it is that I’ve lost. Or at least articulate it in such a way that I am completely satisfied with. I may never be able to fully articulate it, but I think I’ll be able to get closer than I am right now. At least I know where I want to be again and can work towards it, if somewhat blindly.
Thoughts? Anyone? Anyone?
