Penetration of Light

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

What Can't Be Stolen

Over this past winter my car was broken into and most of my camera equipment was stolen. Even though I've been on a sort of hiatus with my art I was devastated.

I had been planning on getting back to creating even if on a limited basis. I had even scheduled a shoot that I had been looking forward to for quite some time, a shoot that I had to cancel. I felt defeated, and lost. I felt like my art had been taken away from me. Then I had an epiphany.

Even on my hiatus I had continued to flex my creative muscle by taking landscape photos on my phone and posting them to Facebook and Instagram, using the limited editing apps on my phone and filters on Instagram to exert as much control over the final product as I could. I hadn't given it much respect in my mind as it was just a way of capturing the beautiful Texas skies and showing my friends and keeping a record of my journey. And it was just my phone!

My epiphany was realizing that it wasn't my equipment that made my art, it was the amount of control I exerted as limited by the tools at my disposal that made my art possible; it didn't matter if I found myself more limited because of a different tool, I could still build my vision using what I had: my Nexus 5 and a few editing apps. And even if I lose these tools, I have others, I can go back to drawing with ballpoint pens on paper or if those aren't available I could scratch at a wall with a stick.

That's what can't be stolen, what can't be taken away from me: my desire to create and my ability to think, to overcome obstacles, to keep moving forward, to keep my vision alive.

To be me.

(Taken on a Nexus 5, created in my soul.)