I have been reading sporadically, “The Little Book of Ikigai”. I read books like this, instruction books effectively in a sporadic fashion, because I hate reading serious instruction books and self help books count here.
Welcome a a small window into the reality of being me.
On the back is a little blurb that sums up the contents, as far as I have read s far anyway.
Start small
Find your flow
Discover your passion
Look for joy in the little things
My stills journey did this quite organically.
Starting slow was a given. There were few places to gain knowledge quickly and where I lived, they dealt with generalisations, not specifics, good for a solid base, not much more.
It took me years to “get” apertures, depth of field, the quality and qualities of various films and processes.
Mentors were few and often all on the same path (weddings etc), books expensive and hard to be aware of, magazines came out monthly or less often and were hit and miss at best. I am not saying there were no mentors for me to draw from, there were some, but they were also on a pathway of learning and busy, obsessed by their own work.
Finding my flow and passion were also relatively easy, because I was inspired by the things around me, limited to those things only and my visual inspirations supported that. The weird juxtaposition that is a library of books of the American landscape and wildlife palette or National Geographic classics and the Australian equivalent aside, I knew what I wanted to shoot without question, I just needed to work out how to do it.
Don’t want to loose my head.
Some context.
There were not many images around in those days in the 80’s to 90’s. Compared to now, a relative drop in the ocean and they were hard to capture well. Getting the shot was often the win, a better shot the province of our betters.
Slow slide film, with the week long processing wait and cost, or black and white and darkroom processes (nobody serious shot in colour neg film), thin information pathways, meagre communities to draw from all contributed to glacial paced growth.
Professionals were the people who had their film paid for or were lucky enough to have a strong group to share with.
It is not a coincidence that the greats of the early 20th century American art movement often lived close to each other.
The joy in little things is I guess the library of wins I have filed away, the awareness of what makes a difference and knowledge I was doing them well enough.
Sometimes it is there to see, but only you can find it.
Video was very different.
Start small was a processes of acceleration from a stills knowledge base, a flood of incoming info from various online sources, quickly learning how to get more and better results from gear I had or improving it and learning more (if I had decided not to bother, I may well have been happier).
From curiosity to the beginnings of a new skill set has been too fast I feel. The settled and solid knowledge of fewer but better and more reliable sources to draw from has eluded me. Too many opinions, some even erroneous, many circuitous pathways, genuine confusion, all resulting in time, money and sanity wasted.
Find your flow is probably the key one.
I never really have and it is only recently, when suspecting I would be better off by reducing my expectations, processes, even my offer, that I realised I was wearing too many hats, reacting to the ideas of others and forgetting myself completely in the process.
Discover your passion was the bit I completely rode rough-shod over.
My passion and my commercial needs have been mostly at odds. I occasionally get the chance to do something close to my ideal, but not often and when I do, the creative process is rarely in my control.
Is video maybe better as a hobby for me? My stills journey started as a hobby, that was how I learned by being passionate and obsessed.
Looking for joy in the small things. This is hard to do if you ignore the above.
It is the Ikigai ideal to take joy from all the small parts of the greater thing, elevating that thing from a mundane chore to a form of personal life-art, a study in perfection, but you do need to identify the what and why first.
I did early on, then I let the doing of it control me.
Is it possible to undo this, or even better to have avoided it in the first place?
Doing things the old way is pointless, but balancing information is also hard. There are many more pathways to knowledge, especially in this world.
I am intending to pull back, to try to find my feet and regain control of this mess.
I hope I can.