One of my favorite things about the "off-season" is that I get to slow down and focus on the craft of photography. Artists over the centuries have gazed for hours on end at still-life arrangements set before them to help master their skills.
We all take our vision for granted as we pour over newspaper print or bang-out emails. Yet, so much information bounces into our brains through our eyeballs each day that we instantly forget ninety-nine percent of what our eyes take in.
But the still-life changes all that. It's an exercise in seeing, but so much more. You see shadows. You notice the fading luminescence across a slight curve. Subtleties draw your attention. Color deepens as the light fades. Hues alter. You shift your head to get a better view, and a reflection from the window behind you slides across the landscape and changes everything it touches. Suddenly you realize just how fragile your grasp of this moment is.
Then an idea strikes. You have great power over this scene in front of you. You can decide what it will look like on the canvas. You can change the relationships between subjects. You can adjust your viewpoint. You can add a brush of light to emphasize beauty or obscure a blemish in the shadows. You are the master of your exercise.
This idea swells into a plan, and you scheme to make this art yours, to create what you want to see and how you think it could be or even as it should be. You want that red to be a little more crimson and that yellow to be a shade closer to golden. You could gloss over a texture to make the view more pleasing or ignore a part altogether; after all, it is your creation, your art.
That's what the great artists did, right? The evolution of art has become infinitely more than just copying what's in front of you. In real life, the subjects of Picasso or Renoir could never have appeared as they did on canvas. Instead, they created something beyond what was visible. The great artists showed that art is a living thing that changes and breathes through humanity's senses. Suddenly, the need to capture your feelings while peering into your still-life forces you to look deeper into the scene before you in addition to your memories, thoughts, and emotions.
But how? How can you paint something as intangible as a feeling? How can you share this moment with someone else? So that they too, can feel the joy that you see exploding from the smiling flower before you. So that they too, can feel the gentle caress of the shadow across the flowing fabric. So that they too, can be swept away by the scent of chamomile, coaxed into your senses from your childhood, by a blossom in the background of your still-life.
So what do you do?
You open yourself to everything in front of you and reflect on everything inside you... and you begin.