Memorial Day

At a site I usually check once or twice a week, Weekly Photo Tips and Tricks, I found this slideshow honoring Memorial Day . I am posting a link and I hope you will check it out. http://www.weeklyphototips.com/ It takes a couple of seconds to load, but it's worth the brief wait.

I wish we would all take time between our barbecues, trips, marathon viewings on TV, etc. to remember why we have this holiday weekend. Viewing the slideshow certainly didn't cheer me up, but it put some things in perspective.

Drained

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I have completed my second special project in two months and feeling totally drained. Yesterday, I received notice that the order has been shipped. Now, by the first of June, I will know how the venture turned out. Besides being absorbed in that job, I have been hiding out lately—feeling overwhelmed by circumstances. If I am going to post anything for the next few days, it will have to be just some images without words.

Looking for the Crystal Ball

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What I would most like to do today is reflect on the SoFoBoMo experience and continue my learning—goodness knows there is still so much to learn. However, The Husband wants to move some things up to Bear Valley, and I feel I should support him. After all, I skipped the last two trips up there. So, I am going along, even though I am not much help with this sort of job.

Today, we are moving mostly equipment from the boarding stable and more items from the storage unit. Since this whole plan is in serious jeopardy, there is no joy in moving anything up there. Within a short time, it may be coming back. Where did I leave that blasted crystal ball anyway? It would be nice to know where we are going to end up.

Blurb Blues

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Between the nasty complications that have arisen in my life, this project I have taken on, and the time it is taking to recover from SoFoBoMo, I am not getting out and shooting much and not finding much to say that seems worth sharing. I'm still keeping up with my favorite bloggers and catching up on some additional reading.

I am looking forward to beginning a project that is more about shooting and less about this business of preparing files for Blurb. Gordon McGregor left a comment on Paul Butzi's site that spooked me a bit. He mentioned having "over-corrected" some photos for his book. Now, I am second-guessing myself on my understanding of what it takes to prepare a file with that profile.

Projects and Letdowns

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I am in that state that, for me, always follows a massive project. Inevitably, my whole system is thrown out of whack by the sudden withdrawal from the extreme doses of adrenalin that coursed through my body during the encounter. While at work on the assignment, my concentration is honed to a fine point. Everything I see, read, or hear seems related to the endeavor and I exist in a heightened state. Distractions either become another way of seeing what must be seen in order to complete the task, or they are dispatched and forgotten. Physical problems are suppressed and I reach down deep (or way up high) someplace beyond the problems for strength, or freedom from pain or diversion, and forge ahead. Real-life problems and worries get pushed under the proverbial rug. The reserves of energy and clarity that are called in to play produce a sense of heightened abilities and an increased awareness that, for a time, make almost anything seem possible.

Finally, when the work is done, the plunge back to normalcy—that let down or falling back to earth—many of us feel after completing a sizable creative endeavor is very real for me. You would think I would be better at managing it, since I have lived with it (off of it, for it, whatever) most of my life. Unfortunately, I am only marginally better at managing my energies now than I was when I first began participating in theatre and enduring the letdown that inevitably ensued as soon as the curtain fell on the final performance.

SoFoBoMo has had that effect on me. This isn’t a complaint. I am thoroughly delighted that I took part and wouldn’t take it back for anything. What I learned was, for me, the equivalent of a one-month crash course through a year’s worth of information. I will be profiting by the experience and blessing it for years to come. Still, it’s there—the sense of being a bit at loose ends—that space where all that energy was created and spent feels particularly empty right now.

This time around all these feelings are compounded by some other issues. Since we are in limbo—neither here nor there—moving supposedly, yet there is no movement—the lostness is intensified. Having only recently given up running my studio plays into this, of course. With teaching those very personal classes, I always had several creative projects I was juggling. After all, each actor was a work in progress and my contribution in guidance was part of a long-term creative project that was never really complete and produced a steady stream of challenge and frustration tempered with satisfaction and encouragement. Thus, for me, another project is a matter of survival. I can’t control that potential buyer out there who is going to buy our house. I can’t begin the next adventure until I am physically in that place.

My way of dealing with this lostness, was to begin a project and see if I can make something. (I have already mentioned my secret.) Sure enough,the work—the intense focus is pushing me through this period and taking my mind off things I can't control. Somewhere along the way my family came up with a silly saying when I was growing up. I have no earthly idea where it came from, but when someone was doing something not really responsible, or even harmlessly foolish, one of us (in the beginning one of my parents, probably) would say with a grin, “Well, at least it keeps him out of the pool halls.” So here I am. At least I won’t be hanging out in any pool halls for the next couple of weeks.

Secrets

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I am working on a project, but I can't talk about it because the wrong person might read this post and find out about it too early. Drat. I'm not very good at keeping secrets—my own that is. If you tell me something and ask me to keep it private, my lips are sealed. I mean wild horses couldn't drag it out of me. But, if it's something I am up to, I'm worse than a kid before Christmas. Okay, I just have to give a hint. It's not another SoFoBoMo project—although I am sorely tempted, but it is somewhat related. Now, don't ask me again. Honestly, I could cave in and blow the whole thing.

Laying Low

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Another voice from the recovery ward. I thought Paul Butzi phrased it perfectly when stating that a couple of days ago he was “in the post-SoFoBoMo recovery”. While there was a flurry of activity on the blogs throughout April, I have noticed that many of the participants in the project have been quieter than usual since books were completed. I suppose the dialogue will pick up again once the May group gets rolling, but apparently I am not the only one moving rather slowly for a while.

I am a bit overwhelmed with some things that aren’t nearly as much fun and not nearly as exciting as another photo book. But, this won’t last forever.

Synchronicity

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(I don't know what happened to this post and how it got lost, but I have re-published it. I may have the date wrong, but it went up sometime in early May.)

Today, I awoke in a reflective mood and began to draft some notes in an attempt to state some thoughts and feelings about the place of art projects in my everyday life. After getting close to what I was trying to say, I detoured to read the posts on some of my favorite blogs. I normally do that first with my breakfast, but decided to get really rebellious this morning and shake things up a bit. What a surprise. I found others talking about similar issues, and far more effectively than what I had scribbled and set aside for a moment (those notes still languinsh unfinished). It appears the synchronicity of experiences produced by the SoFoBoMo project may not yet have run its course.

Okay, Folks—That’s a SoFoBoMo Wrap

The book is done.

Here is the link: http://www.framinglightphotography.com/one_last_look.pdf
[Note: Designed to view “two-up” (View—Page Display—Two-Up, Show Gaps, Show Cover Page During Two-Up)]

It’s too late to make any more changes. It is what it is. Whew! What a trip. Ups and downs, chug-holes, bridges out, signals not working, detours, and dead ends—and all in all splendid, priceless, and unforgettable.

When I was growing up, I begged my mother to tell me this story more than once. Mom grew up on a farm in Texas and one day, her grandfather took her out with him in the wagon behind a fresh team. Some portion or other of the rigging broke, spooking the horses, and they took off across the rough terrain out of control and with plenty of energy to burn. My great-grandfather was holding on to the useless reins for dear life and trying to be certain that his tiny, screeching granddaughter was staying put on the seat beside him. After what was for the driver a hair-raising, out-of-control race, up and down gullies, scraping rocks, and bouncing off logs, the horses finally tired, and the poor man dared to take a breath. When the team slowed to a walk, he turned pale and shaken, to the tyke next to him and before he could offer any comfort she blurted through a big grin, “That was fun, Grandpa. Do it again.”

I'm with that little girl on the wagon seat. Let’s do it again.

SoFoBoMo Final Stretch

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As I make my way through the final stages on my book, I am shaking my head over some of the discoveries.

1. This isn’t the book I intended to make. When I signed up for SoFoBoMo, I was looking forward to trying my hand at producing an elegant book with a small number of images (close to the required limit) that would somewhat accurately represent the best work I am capable of at this point in my life and still stay within the time limits. I thought I was making a book to learn about producing a photo book and get past the fears of tackling such a mammoth project, so I would be encouraged to later produce such a book without the time constraints. I intended to be shrewd and disciplined by including little text—to make it a photo book in the purest sense of the term. That decision would allow me to focus exclusively on the images and the layout thus saving valuable time. Instead, I ended up making something that met almost none of my initial objectives.

2. The book has turned out to be bulky (plenty of text, after all), and a much bigger mess than I thought I could tolerate, but each time I have tried to make it fit into anything vaguely resembling that elegant image in my mind, the whole thing fell apart and became so utterly meaningless that I couldn’t bear to finish it.

3. Choosing a very personal focus for my book ended up being a double-edged sword. The hunger to capture images that would later serve as a bittersweet reminder of the home I have loved for twenty years provided the emotional heat that powered me through the long hours, but perhaps melted my brain. The book is a mass of contradictions and examples of a project gone berserk. For example, there are far too many images in the book for the project I wanted to produce and only about half enough to satisfy the hunger that drove the work. Furthermore, while I envisioned something simple and elegant, the final product is sprawling, decidedly untidy, and as much in need of pruning as the locations that I photographed.

4. Ultimately, this is a reminder that all creative endeavors are a messy business and filled with unpredictability—indeed, for many of us that is part of its joy. I am pretty much spent and have left for myself this one day for proofing text and finding assorted gremlins.

5. The journey has been frustrating, exhausting, inspiring, and I have crammed more new information into my head in the two months of preparation and execution than I dreamed possible. Still, I am grateful that I lost my head and signed up to be part of this madness.