Sometimes I don’t know where the ideas and concepts for another image disappear. I feel drained and even when I pick up my camera I can’t find the place or the perspective to make a shot. Other times I sit at the computer and look at images I have in Photoshop and nothing clicks. Feel empty inside. Makes for that dull drained feeling. Days go by and still there is no direction. Drive to a new location and look around for a spot to take an image. Everwhere it all looks boring and uninteresting. So I drive home after taking a shot or two and download the images into Photoshop. They all look mundane and ordinary. The cycle of boring and ordinary continues till I think that my creativity is used up.
There’s a magazine on the table. It a new issue of B&W+Color. I leaf through the pages. I usually do color images now but did shoot 35mm black and white before going to digital. I look at the pages of images. Many are really interesting but not really what I do as a photographer. I read an article or two. Still I have no ideas of what to do next.
The next morning after breakfast I glance at the magazine again. Turn a few more pages hoping, like a person dieing of thirst in a desert, to find a direction. Perhaps I will find something that will inspire me. Another page and another image. An image lays there on the page. Not really the kind of shot that I take but it triggers. At the computer I find some old images and try out an idea. Another memory of images from some time back race back to the front of my memory. Moving to another directory on the search, there they are. Now what? Sitting for a moment is all it takes. A few key strokes, add some layers a little tweeking and there it is. Something new had arrived on my screen. From where did the idea materialize? What scraped a neuron to make it spark an impulse for that idea. Why did it take so long? Happiness is having the idea. I will not disect the source only welcome the thought and the resulting image. And hope there will be more to come.
