Hi There…
Much like almost everything in midlife, I’m not sure what I am doing with photography right now.
After a bit of a hiatus from sharing my photography online, I felt the need to pull my work together and create a portfolio website. The intention was to restart a small photo business but within seconds of hitting “publish” I was done with it.
In rare moments the privilege of viewing process as the inherent place where growth happens slips in. The final destination is a half-illusion, it seems. The end never looks and feels like I expect it to. The journey with it’s ups and downs, trials and tribulations, passes and fails, clearances and obstacles are for sure where my heart feels a shift in the good kind of way. The trouble is remembering this.
This same theory applies across fields of my life which include the vast most-important-to-me landscapes of motherhood, relationships, mental well-being, general health and running. Photography and creativity is a smaller side meadow that remains a choice to step into should I feel like it. It’s too bad I don’t venture there enough, meadows are lovely and peaceful!
With creating this website I’ve been forced to explore my past through photographs which felt HARD and SCARY and kind of put me into a deep depression for a few weeks.
Not many things in life force you to revisit emotions and feelings in a visceral way like going through old pictures will. Pulling together my past work was ROUGH but also reminded me that with all the “content” out there, our own photographs are memories created for ourselves real FOR REAL, for better or worse and in all those spaces in between.
AND that is powerful. Isn’t it?
I mean, it’s so affecting that I avoided looking at any of it for years. I wasn’t ready to be in those memories.
BUT once I went in on all of it? BOY was it was cathartic to publish this website and understand right then and there that the entire process was THE THING.
It turns out that creating this website isn’t about starting a business really, or marketing or even sharing the work, it was was about revisiting the memories.
Working on these portfolios also reminded me of one of the things I believe I’m good at, a thing that I feel “in flow” with, a thing I love to do which is taking pictures.
This website and blog maybe won’t be about just photography. I may take photos for money or maybe I won’t. I’m not even sure yet what I want to do, if anything at all.
After taking some (too much)time (over)thinking it, I decided that putting my little creative things out there might feel kind of nice. Thanks for reading and HI THERE!
