Reflection

taking advise from a grumpy cloud

The little grey cloud has a small angry orange lighting bolt flashing. I have ignored or perhaps not seen it but now every time I open Lightroom where I store and edit my photos, I see it. A little twitch of a reminder, my storage for my photos is almost full. I have 5 years of photos here - some 70,000 plus all dumped at the time to free my camera of photos, so I can take more. I have kept everything. All the good, the blurred and the bad. My mad little cloud is telling me it is time to have a clean up. But where do you start? 70,000 is a lot of photos to look at. Do I sit for a number of days and tune out the rest of world as I fall into the place of gardens past? Do I ignore it? I decide in the end to as I add more photos flick back through to the same day on years past and do a clean out. The challenge of course is too load less photos than I delete and so far it is working. I’ve got rid of a few.

It is has been a journey of reflection. I see how I have grown as a photographer. How in early 2020 when Covid was rocking our world I was slowing down like we all had too and discovering my garden with my camera. The photos are the first steps, the wobbles and the little gems which encouraged me a long. There are few here and there I like. There are more than a few which the older self speaks kindly to younger self with words of encouragement. Then there are moments when I look and I find myself saying - what were you thinking? I went down many rabbit holes in my early days of figuring out how to use my camera and then how I express myself with it. There are stories of different lens, the lens baby which I really was a bambi like with. Limbs and lens were never coordinated enough to actually create anything of merit. There is a the little blur lens which I remember finally turning up in the post mid Covid on a quiet day and I shriek with delight at having something new to play with. I was inspired to explore using these different lens by others thinking their voices where better than my own. It is a step in growth when you play and then can feel more confident in what you want your photos to look like and you don’t rush to emulate your hero.

There is also a story of time. 2021 I had more time and I can see that what I have created then is more playful. Ideas that I think of now just sit as I search for the time to explore them. Back then I can see moments of double exposure play and of self portraits. There are more images, more learning, more mistakes. I kinda look at them and miss that person who just charged ahead and did. Now I find myself more curated and thinking, perhaps even less sure of what I want to do with my camera. I suspect it is part of the journey and I know from other artists there are moments when you feel a bit stuck. I guess seeing the freedom of a few years ago highlights that I can perhaps add a bit more play to my work. That it needs to loosen up. Maybe try within in the time constraints I have. Maybe make the time constraint part of the the play.

And of course there is a delightful romp through the garden. It is a shaggy looking wilderness now compared to 5 years ago. I see flowers repeatably appear through out. Things I love returning again and again. There are the show stoppers like Lilies that appear a week early, then later depending on the year and the season. It is interesting seeing how some years I capture the flower in bloom perfectly and then other years it seems to be to, that I am searching for something I don’t find that season. It did make me realise I could look at adding more variety to the garden. Some different flowers perhaps for something different to photograph.

I will continue on my reflective journey and hopefully come year end my little grumpy rain cloud is no more. That the rubbish, the blurred, the duplicates are removed and I can then perhaps revisit what I have and find a story that will be something I want to share.