My creative lesson 40 — Walking with the moon
4 October, 2020
The theme for this week at 52frames was blue. It is often these seemingly ‘easy’ challenges that are the most difficult. Should I just shoot something with the color blue? What do I have that is blue? Will I be able to bribe my daughter to pose in a pair of blue jeans?
Or maybe it should be something that makes you feel blue. (I am predicting that there are going to be a lot of blue masks in this album.)
Why is it that we connect negative feelings with the color blue? A blue Monday, feeling blue, singing the blues. I was discussing all of this with the moon on the way home from one of my long walks.
The moon was nearly full and contrasted brightly against the evening sky. The road that I walked on gave me a clear view and it felt as though the moon accompanied me. The moon does give that feeling of following you around, doesn’t it?
I was in a happy mood because I was outdoors and the endorphins from the exercise had started to kick in. As I walked along the road it quickly became darker and darker.
This road leads up to a small reserve nature right at the edge of my own and is a popular exercise spot. There are hardly any street lamps along this road — it is not a public road and the reserve closes in the early afternoons.
I caught glimpses of fellow humans as they passed by me. Either their cellphones lit up their faces or the moonlight highlighted the sweat on their bodies.
The sight of the moonlight lighting up the clouds against the ink blue sky just struck me as so amazingly beautiful. And reminded me that I still had to take a blue photo this week. Hence the discussion with my sky-high companion.
I had such a strong feeling of peace from the walk and the beautiful view that I became less and less worried about what I am going to shoot for the 52frames challenge. This is usually a serious and often anxious decision that I have to make every week.
It was as though the moon calmed me and reminded me that beauty is everywhere.
“Anything blue is fine”, he told me. (In Marina’s parallel universe, where the moon chats to people, the moon is masculine.)
I concurred with the moon, yeah I thought to myself. He is right. Anything blue is fine. Then I stopped turning over photo shoot ideas in my head and just enjoyed walking the rest of the way home under the bright moon.
Saturday came and it was time to take out my camera. I have decided that Saturdays will be my committed shooting days because I want to stop winging a last minute quick photo.
I started to walk around in my quiet neighborhood and took photos of blue things. I was wearing one of those awful blue masks even though the streets were empty. It is still very hot during the day here in Israel and we have been placed under a second lockdown. So I had the streets to myself. Before the parents with small children come out to exercise them and try to regain a shred of sanity.
My 52frames photo is a bit staged though. I took the baby sunflower from my house and placed it on this small blue skating rink used by the small kids in the ‘hood.
The heat and the difficulty of breathing through those stupid masks didn’t make this photoshoot easy. But I kept thinking back to that walk I had with the moon and it calmed me down a lot. So I just kept walking and shooting anything blue that caught my eye.
Sometimes one has to suffer for your art and pay some type of price. You have to shoot with thought and intention.
Sometimes though, you are also allowed to chill and just shoot what you see. I know this is true because the moon told me so. 😊
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 37 — location has energy, time has memory
My creative lesson 38 — one thing can change everything
My creative lesson 39 — steal like an artist
