Day 1

     Today I really struggled. It's the first of a series, so I have to make a good impression, right? So the pressure was on.

     Of course, I wanted something "new" for New Year's Day, so I spent a while brainstorming on what kind of things I could artistically represent that were new. I am new and different than last year, but I have enough self-portraits to fill a museum, due to my lack of models. The year (obviously) is new, but that idea didn't even occur to me until now (duh, Ali). The snow outside was new and untouched, so I headed outside, to find me feeling much better.

     Snow is hard to represent photographically. Snow ruins pictures, it throws off the color and contrast of an image, and I had almost forgotten that it is nearly impossible to get a good picture of snow. But I remembered it pretty quickly. The world outside on the first day was incredibly beautiful, but only to my eyes. All my camera saw was stark whiteness. So I was reduced to finding something to do with the snow to try and demonstrate new. I was so focused on making a creative, touching image of the snow, that I was stuck within a photographer's block. I was trying so hard that I killed creativity.

     And then I turned around to see my gloves that I had left in the snow. And there was my image. Nothing new, just something clean and wintry and simple. And just that easily, I found a mood that pretty accurately represents my attitude today. And I learned with that, that creativity isn't created, it is discovered. All creativity is is how we see the world around us.

Happy New Years. And happy Winter.