Adventures in Frustration or A Hidden Treasure
Sunday, October 1, 2006
The light in October is beautiful and totally worth sacrificing breakfast and a little sleep to capture. That’s why this past Saturday morning found me out in a field, in the early morning, waiting for the sun to illuminate dew drops just the right way. The light was perfect and the sky was stunning, but at this location, I couldn’t find a view without power lines. In the end, I trudged home, wet and frustrated, in search of coffee, having decided that the “shoot” was a bust.
When I got home and off-loaded the 50 or so shots that I had taken, my suspicions were confirmed. Between the ever-present power lines & my shaking hands, {It was cold as well as early...} none of the shots turned out to be what I envisioned when I set out. Too blurry or too full of extra information, there didn’t seem to be any keepers except for one set of three shots that had pretty color in the sky and a silhouetted flower stalk with a single dew drop, in the foreground. Of the three, one shot was in focus; I liked the composition of another; and one seemed unimpressive on both fronts. Obviously they didn’t strike me as magical when I shot them, because I didn’t even remember taking them. Still, I was pretty glad that there was some payoff for the pile of wet clothes and all the frustration inside my head and spilling onto Randy.
{And by the way, when is my creative practice ever worth sacrificing important relationships?...}
I decided late last night to take the one shot that had decent composition and fashion some sort of apology to Rands for being such a grump. I also decided to take a closer look at the few individual shots that were closest to my ideal and see if metadata and intense scrutiny would reveal the adjustments needed for the situation next time.
{the situation = the place of dealing with change, discomfort and an environment that doesn’t match large ideals.}
I almost missed it. I almost hit delete...
There hidden inside the third unimpressive shot was a hidden treasure. Reflected in the face of the dew drop was an image of the incredible sky that I had been striving so hard to capture. There suspended on the end of a dried flower stalk, in a throw away shot, was a reminder that anything that I “create” is simply a reflection of God’s glory. It was a prompt to look closely at what seems to be, by my analysis something to discard, and find every bit of what God has for me.
