PixelatedImage Blog

I stayed in yesterday, it was cold. But I picked up the camera and shot for an hour. This is a Commedia dell’Arte Arlecchino mask from Venice that sits on my mantel. The image doesn’t matter much, but picking up my camera and shooting was important for me.

In August I published a short piece called A Long Way To Go: A Rant. It was a little like the antithesis of the fluffy pep talk. And oddly it resonated with many, many people. I think people who are finding it hard to find and express their vision find it a comfort that others do too, especially those who’ve been on this journey longer. So I’m just going to re-iterate that as loudly and clearly as I can for those that missed it. It is hard. It is scary. And the closer you get, the more you care, and love, and want to succeed, the harder and scarier it is. But it’s also amazing.

I’ve just finished Pressfield’s The War of Art and his central premise is that for every artist there is a resisting force that holds them back, and the more you want that thing to which you aspire – the more deeply you care – the stronger that force is and the greater the fear. It’s not something you can avoid; it’s like gravity – inevitable, immutable. But it tells you something. The fear, the difficulty – they point like a lodestone to true north and reveal the thing that’s most important for you to accomplish in your creative life. If I am scared to death to submit my work to a competition – it’s that very thing I must do. That resistance, Pressfield says, comes in the form of procrastination and excuses, in false humility and stubborn arrogance. It comes in any form that will side-track you from your work.

And it’s those last two words he repeats over and over again. Borrow my copy of the book and you’ll see it underlined repeatedly. Your work. The work. Work. Work. Work.

Which is odd because he talks about muses so much it makes you wonder if he’s being metaphoric or actually believes in them. At first the two seem irreconcilable, two divergent ways of looking at the life creative. So which is it? Hard work or fairy dust? Persperation or Inspiration? To which The War of Art seems to answer, Yes. It is.

How dare we think that we can just pick up a camera, master the simple act of pointing and pressing, and effortlessly create something that will catch the eyes of others yet alone move their hearts or even satisfy our own need for expression? How flippant we must be to allow artists through the generations to spend a lifetime mastering their craft, while we expect our own training to be done over a weekend crash course or a 2-year diploma program. I’m not  criticising, I’m reminding you – and myself – that we have permission from the muses to take our time, to suck for a while, as we learn our craft, and hammer out our vision.

No writer I have ever heard interviewed speaks kindly of their process. They don’t use artsy, poetic words. They use words like work, arduous, painful. Would they trade their life as an artist for something else? Maybe. But that’s not the point, they don’t do it because they can, they do it because they must. Something in them pushes and pushes and pushes until it finds its expression. But the act of getting it out, like the labour of childbirth, is never easy. The years of honing your craft so that when it does finally come out, it comes out to its fullest expression, that’s not easy. But surely once in a while we all still catch our breath, step back a moment and remember how much we love what we do – hardships be damned. In fact, don’t the hard days make the great images even sweeter? Doesn’t it make the times this feels like play even better?

Even when you’ve got your mind around this vision stuff, it changes and evolves, making it tough for even the most introspective of us to keep up, to keep our fingers on the pulse of our own vision. And that’s the wonder of it – as you grow, experience life, travel, suffer heartache and setback, your unique outlook on the world changes, changing every frame you photograph. Your vision never finds its perfect expression because you never do. Photography imperfectly expresses our changing imperfect selves, making this a lifelong journey. I find that deeply encouraging. On the days when I’m coming up empty, struggling to see clearly or make sense of the story in front of me, it gives me the room to squeeze in a little grace, to relax, to take a breath. We’re not curing cancer here, folks. Amazingly, it’s often just that perspective that sets the muse free from my ridiculously high expectations, and in so doing allows her to do her work. And I do mine. And sometimes it feels like it is all coming out ok, that today I suck a little less than I did the day before.

As I write this I got distracted, saw an email come in. It’s a comment from Rosane, a regular here and a Lumen Dei alumni. Please, she begs, give us something sunnier. I hear ya, Rosane. I get how this stuff might seem insufferably introspective. What I’m really trying to say is this: this is a tough craft, it’ll take a lifetime to master. And your vision is always changing, so it’ll take a lifetime to interpret and express. And if that’s the case I think the one thing that fuels this has got to be passion. Work hard, but lighten up. If you don’t do this for the sheer love of it – even on those hard days – why bother? Why do I keep at it when my work takes me to tough places, and 16-hour days, and 2 weeks of post-assignment nausea, jet-lag and deadlines? Because when I am standing on the edge of a rice patty and the light is just right and I am with people that fascinate me – there’s no place I’d rather be. I’ll happily go through it for that one frame that comes even close to capturing that feeling and passing it on. If this week is about the Why, then that’s it right there for me. And for me it’s one of the best feelings in the world – the feeling that I’m doing what I was put here to do. And that’s worth – a million times over – the struggle and the hard work.

Keep at it folks. Give yourself permission to work hard, to be you and not Ansel Adams or Sam Abell or  the photographer you wish you were. Feel free to suck for a while, to take lousy, out of focus images. To hell with the art snobs It’s how we get where we’re going, so long as we do it with passion, and if we’re in it for the long haul we might as well love it.

I highly recommend finding and reading Pressfield’s The War of Art. I loved it. As with all books like this, or even this blog, there will be things you take with a grain of salt, metaphors you find…odd, but there’s so much good in there that I can’t help but suggest you find it, read it with a pen in hand, and digest it. I’ll read it twice by the time the week is through.