Becoming more comfortable

Until the last six months of my life, I truly believed that I did not have an artistic bone in my body. I thought I was "crafty" but not "artistic", a distinction that I still think is very important. Then I fell in love with photography and discovered that I had some talent at it, and all of a sudden, I was thrown into this realm of trying to produce fine art without knowing what fine art really is. I'm not the most self-assured person, so this insecurity has been really difficult to work through while still trying to produce what I need for class and try to grow as an artist. So I ended up having a really long conversation with my professor yesterday about this and other things related to this, and I have to say, I feel so much better. Sometimes that doubt and insecurity gets the better of you and prohibits you from growing, so I'm really determined not to let that happen.

I think it's interesting, too, the way talent works. I may not be really old, but I definitely feel set in my ways. But as a youth I was taught that we are all given talents and that there are some that you are able to develop. I just never thought that I would stumble across a new talent in my thirties. I guess I thought that all of my divinely given talents had manifested themselves before this point and it was up to me to develop any other talents that I wanted to cultivate. But that's contrary to how I feel about my talent in photography. Of course I need to develop this talent, it's not as though I'm producing artwork that is worthy of a gallery or museum, but I strongly believe that I have a talent in this that has been given to me that I'm stumbling upon at this point in life. So it's been a few interesting days as I've been pondering over these thoughts and working to improve my photography.












Throughout the semester, we have some assignments where we're not given an assignment, we just have to produce five photographs of whatever we want. They can stand on their own or be part of a series, we have to decide. There was recently a horribly tragic accident on the highway near my home in which two 16 year old boys lost their lives. Driving by the accident site the next day, I wanted to go out and photograph it as a way of honoring them.