A Lesson Through the Lens
Originally published 22/05/20
Photo courtesy of CanterCreative
Not so long ago I lost my very first digital camera. It was purchased during my time in Canada and it played a faithful companion to me during my time in that picturesque country. I have never been one to care for material possessions as such, clothes perhaps, but that’s about the extent of it. To lose something like a camera, however, was a loss deeply felt.
At the time, it felt like an invasion of privacy. A loss of an instrument with deep personal weight. It sounds almost comical to say, but I carried its loss for a while after that, even after I replaced it with an almost identical model. The only conceivable thing I took away from the whole stressful ordeal was a lesson. Not the least like those throwaway lessons at secondary school, but like those that your parents taught you when you were young, like table manners and tying your shoes. It was a life lesson after all, and I treated it as such.
That lesson has been oh so readily applied to our current crisis. At a time when everything we hold dear raises questions and a sense of purpose is treated as a precious commodity, the importance of my camera and its role in my very sanity has been made abundantly clear.
I, like many others before, during and most certainly after me, have a passion for landscape and nature photography. The simple truth is, it’s the time I feel most inspired. Out in nature, a sense of calm finds you. What worries and other impure thoughts you may have seem to wash away. What I’m left with is a feeling, a humbling sense of natural grandeur that seems to come on strongest when I’m faced with nothing but the open air and trees and the sea.
While I may relish the opportunities provided to me by an abundance of free time and an increased significance on spending as much time outside as humanly possible given the restraints imposed on us by our government, I feel for those whose art and practice have been affected by our current crisis.
Freedom of expression and movement is so very vital for many artists and going against its nature by placing borders within it seems almost alien. What advice I can give rests solely on finding inspiration where you can. Traverse the great outdoors, revisit old work in the hopes of finding something anew. With the reality check, we’ve all endured, what seemed done and dusted yesterday, may spark new life today.
