Until now, it has been an unexpected and rather intense winter this year over here in Austria.
Could it be that the owner of this accommodation also had to suddenly rethink and rearrange his or her priorities due to the sudden change of weather conditions? What might have been of bigger importance there? The safety of having dry firewood always nearby instead of having to dig it out from the snow outside? Even if doing so would mean that nobody could look inside and out of that window for at least a few months? Or could it be that one of the residents in there might have a very rare and unfortunate light allergy? That it’s actually a good thing too – that hardly any daylight can enter the interior of the apartment? Or another possible scenario: it’s the home of an old, lonely forester (a profession his father and grandfather also had before him) who simply loves when the scent of wood is inside his old home throughout the whole year? Or could it be a subtle political statement – one that’s against society’s closed-mindedness towards burning ecological issues of our time? Inspiring Uncertainty.
By the way. “Shhhh. I’m listening to reason.” would have been the actual title I had in mind for my blog post over here this week. Until I changed my mind and also my priorities….
This week’s blog post revolves around this titular theme and how it relates to and influences my very own creative process behind most of my blog posts here at the “Photograf in Two Worlds”-Blog.
A key sentence in this regard is as follows: “Images need to speak to me.” A realization that spontaneously and unplanned escapted my mind and mouth a few weeks ago in Rhode Island while I was talking to Sarah about pictures she was showing me.
Now, on “my Saturdays” I seldomly take just a single picture. Usually I collect several interesting ones which always leads me to the following question: which of my photos might start “speaking” to me. Will there be more than one picture that starts “speaking” to me or will it be a bunch of shy, maybe even completely “quiet” pictures for me? Well, from my experience here it’s never the latter. Things are always in motion. Even if I can’t hear any picture “talk” to me for a while.
This is often when the trickiest part of the whole process begins for me: the waiting. And enduring it. Until “the conversation” begins. That uncertainty if and when it will happen. And the unavoidable follow-up question if a picture’s story might fit into the so called “bigger picture”. It’s that stage of my creative process I’m still learning most from. Not so much technically and artistically, but more humanly. About myself. That it is actually much more important and meaningful to honestly say “hi” to it (that uncertainty), to take it as it is (an integral part of my creativity actually), to sit beside it and try to better understand it (and myself) in the end – that this approach is more important than trying to avoid that uncertainty at any costs, over and over again – with the unsatisfying result of feeling rushed and letting mostly half-heartedly things out into this world.
So, last Saturday I’ve been at a nearby Christmas market. A motif that would have certainly been a nice one for our blog. Christmas in Austria. Winter, snow, small stalls, fires, hot chestnuts, raclette-cheese sandwiches, mulled wine and dozens of different punch flavors all around that place. Many of the final images taken there spoke to me quite quickly and quite clearly… but after some time I had to admit to myself that none of them was “the right”, that none of them was the puzzle piece I hoped them to be.
So I lay my initial idea aside. The search continued. All along with new priorities. No Christmas market. At least not this time.
And so, on the same day, I stumbled upon this motif in a completely different place, and it immediately started speaking to me. Like a waterfall. For several days I didn’t exactly know what it was saying to me (it sounded more like a foreign language actually), but there was indeed “something” there. Something that not only “spoke” to me but something that also connected nicely with Sarah’s last post here on the blog. It just needed some more time to hatch. And then it finally “clicked”. All of this is about priorities. Shifted priorities. My own and those that “speak” from this picture, from this window. How they shift. How these are sometimes more, sometimes less obvious. How these are sometimes more sometimes less pressuring.
Shifting priorities. Always good for an enlightening conversation. Or as some little, funny, thoughtful stimulus for a photographer’s or reader’s imagination.
(Thank you, Mr. Wondrak)