Creative lesson 42 — When you have too much on your plate
18 October, 2020
The challenge for this week was food photography. It is one of my favourite photo genres and I often photograph food for other challenges. My fellow photographers at 52Frames also take the most delicious — looking and inspiring photos of food. I can easily say that this is one of the few challenges that I wait for every year.
In anticipation, I baked these delicious sesame tahini cookies before the time so that I can be READY!! I love their texture and colour (and taste 😁). The plan was to take one of those dark themed low key photos. As you can see in the photo above, that did not happen.
Instead of creating a visual appealing scene and then moving one cookie one millimeter to the right,
take a photo,
move the cookie back,
take a photo,
turn the handle on the mug,
take a photo,
add more tea to the mug,
take a photo,
I was doing laundry.
Please note that I do not enjoy doing laundry but LOVE taking my time to set up and play around with the props on a shoot.
Life however had other plans for me this week. My boss suddenly called me back from my unpaid vacation and my daughter’s studies were given the green light. Everything was so stalled because of the coronavirus, so it was a bit of a shock when things suddenly started to move again.
Instead of playing with my food (😁), I had to look for keycards and office keys, pack bags, check the bus and train schedules, etc. and so on.
But I still had to take my weekly photo!
Of course I made time for that and I must say that the colours work quite nicely together, no? I just REALLY wish that I had left more space between the mug and the plate. And maybe also moved the mug’s handle so that it lines up with the cloth’s stripes.
I know that I should be okay with myself because I still took a photo. It is one of my priorities to take a photo every week and I did that. But I know that I could have done better.
I wanted to take a strong photo and even planned for it but my priorities changed unexpectedly. My daughter needed me and I had to prepare to return to work after a long hiatus.
So what is my creative lesson this week?
I really don’t know. I still managed to take a photo even though too many other things were going on? I am a bit sad that I didn’t get to play as much on this photoshoot as I wanted too but I stand by my decision.
Maybe I should have taken the time to iron out the wrinkles in the kitchen cloth?
I think my creative lesson is that you sometimes have to accept that other non-related circumstances will influence your art. That is why you should give 100% of your time and effort when you can.
You will definitely have those days when you have too much on your plate and a quick photo is the only thing that you can manage. The days when you DO have enough time and energy are precious and you shouldn’t waste them.
And maybe I should have added another cookie to create more of a stack?
I belong to this photo group called 52Frames where we have to take a photo and upload it every week. (It is 100% free to join but take note that the deadlines are strict.) Plodding along every week getting my weekly photo has taught me a lot about creativity.
My other creative endeavors are writing words, writing code and messing around with drawings and fiber art.
Here are a few of my other lessons about creativity:
My creative lesson 39 — Steal like an artist
