I belong to a group of amazingly talented, and sometimes frustrated, photographers. A friend of mine suggested that we start a monthly theme challenge to get us out of our head a bit and shooting more creatively and less because someone was paying us to do so. Great idea right? So, someone offered up a poem as our first theme to be interpreted how ever we choose, it’s art and it’s all subjective right?
I was so excited about this at the end of last month. This was going to be amazing. I could basically do whatever I wanted with this theme. I had an idea, one I really really liked. I was super stoked that I actually came up with an idea and also, my idea was sort of great ( well to me anyway). Then the world all kind of fell apart. You know, you’re in it. Everyone is so angry and friends are mad at each other and people can’t be kind unless they agree 100%. It’s been hard on me, on you, on everyone. My idea seemed way less awesome now, and way more frightening. I started to think about how silly it was and how it could be taken the wrong way. I shut down and honestly, tried to forget I had committed to this project and to my group of friends. I spent the entire month avoiding it and feeling like nothing I could shoot would make any difference and that it would all be just more noise in a world that is far too loud right now.
The project was due yesterday. About a week ago ( 5 days to be exact) I decided I owed it to my friends to be active in our group and to participate. I know some of them are having a rougher time than I am and they may not be able to produce anything, I wanted to be able to offer some inspiration. I know that some months it just wont be in the cards for me to do it either but this month, it was. I was simply afraid to do it. Those negative voices that tell almost every artist that they aren’t good enough, were working on me but I intentionally and, while late to the game, actively didn’t let them win.
The interesting thing to me is that when I was a child I don’t remember being afraid of things like rejection or being subpar. I used my imagination and created amazing things. There is a beautiful quote that says:
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.”
― Carl Sagan
How powerful is that truth? I mean, my daughter may not have a real life tail but I’m not going to tell her that she isn’t part mermaid if that’s what keeps her swimming.
We started this group to keep us creative and to give us a place that we can do exactly what we want without any one telling us it’s not what they wanted. I hope that I can be better at allowing myself to venture into worlds that don’t exist and build a bridge between them and the world we live in. I think we could all use a bit more mermaid shells, unicorn horns, and fairy dust to get us to a better place. Here is to my goal to keep on swimming following my beautiful mermaid child.