September, 2006

GRACE & GRATITUDE

There are times in our lives that are tough. Personally. Professionally. Emotionally. Last spring I went through several months of just such a crisis. And it is true, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

As I began to recover from this painful period a tune began floating through my head, the old spiritual Amazing Grace. Then, one evening at a Waterford School year-end music concert, the orchestra played a haunting version of this tune. I began to realize that the black days were past. I would be okay and even stronger. The recognition of that which is greater, God, Enlightenment, Allah, or Creativity is truly a graceful moment. When I am working truthfully as an artist I feel this grace.

A later emotion is gratitude. I am grateful - grateful for small things, grateful for large things. This application of gratitude, the acknowledgement of grace, has been subtly and quietly in everything I have done in my life, though often unrecognized and unacknowledged. I have never before understood how it affects my work as an artist. I have joked about the “gifts”, good and bad, from the photo fairies. In a sense this explains my held belief that there are things beyond my control influencing my work.

As part of my healing process, I began reading all sorts of books on creativity and the power of the mind. I ran across the idea of “gratitude rocks” in one. It stuck home with me. I have carried a white stone in my camera bag for years (or several white stones I should say). I often leave them as gifts for the photo fairies when I felt blessed with a good photo. I decided to incorporate the idea of a white rock as a gratitude stone into my workshops.

While on vacation at my sister and brother-in-law’s camp on Moosehead Lake, I began collecting some of these gratitude rocks for my upcoming workshop. One afternoon I was watching my sons and nephews water ski. I sat there in wonderment. Out on the water were these young men, working together to teach my youngest to get up on skis. After a little encouragement he jumped out of the boat, put on the skis and in two tries was up. It was a short-lived ride but he had done it. I was grateful that I had been there watching. Then my other son got up and stayed on the wake board for a long time. I sat watching the boys for almost two hours, being grateful that I could watch these young men at play. While watching I was also collecting more small white stones, more gratitude stones for my workshop. I was truly grateful that I was exactly where I was doing exactly what I was doing.

What does all this have to do with photography? I brought my cameras on this vacation. Every day I made a few photographs. Some good, some exercises but I worked each day. And every day I was grateful to be working. After watching the boys I decided to take my last two sheets of film and go make an image I had seen on a walk earlier that day. I felt the light should be about right. I was going to drive around to the location. I walked into the cabin to tell my wife that I was taking the car, and there before me was my “image of the week”.

A stack of white plates had been set out for dinner on the end of the picnic table. Late afternoon light was streaming across them making them whiter than white. I walked out to my car, grabbed my camera equipment and got back to the camp kitchen. There was the image, fully formed on the ground glass. Very little adjustment of camera position was needed. My wife and sister-in-law standing in the next room could see it on the ground glass. As I put my hand in my pocket for my watch I felt the gratitude stones I had just picked up on the beach.

I could not have planned that image if I had wanted to. My last two sheets of film and maybe the best image of the week. And it was not of my doing.

I don’t have that image ready to put on the web site. It will be months. The print may never be seen by anyone but me. But three of us saw the image on the ground glass. It was grace that put it there. I am grateful for the experience of that image.

Work with Grace.
Acknowledge it with Gratitude.
Your images will follow.