One thing I absolutely love doing is taking pictures. Driving out into the country/city/mountains with no real destination in mind. The only agenda is to snap a picture. Something cool. Something beautiful. A moment. Something that maybe no one else was around to see. Or maybe they were and I just want to remember it.
But there is one thing that keeps me from the adventures I need to experience. Something that has kept me from taking those pictures. Driving those drives. Stepping out into the world. That dark cloud on my horizon materialized about 10 years ago in the form of a mild to moderate case of agoraphobia.
I am bound by my fear of crowds and public places. Which makes being a photographer kind of hard sometimes. I want to go out and take pictures but I may not always have someone to go with me. Maybe the agoraphobia contributes to my desire to be behind the scenes capturing moments. I'm the fly on the wall. The one who is unnoticed and unimportant---yet still a vital part of things. I love having the inside view of goings-on without really being involved.
To be involved is to be noticed...
It's not always this way. Just when my stress levels are at their highest. And here lately---they've been pretty high. Holidays. Work. Wishing so much that I could support myself on just shooting weddings alone. Wishing there were enough weddings to shoot year round to support myself. Wishing my confidence was where it should be so that I wasn't so afraid to market myself more.
A fear of failure goes hand in hand with fear of success.
I've been working on that lately. In a few months I'll really be stepping out of my comfort zone when I trek halfway across the world to Cebu and Manila, Phillippines to document the missionaries' work with the abused and abandoned landfill kids.
I need that trip. I look at it as an open doorway to my career. I'm working on my book. I need more material. The blogging is definately helping. I look at other photographers' blogs and see what they're doing and it motivates me to get out and be creative too. I read other bloggers' rants and stories and latest revelations and it gives me hope. If they can do it, so can I.
So I made a goal to post at least one picture a day and so far I've done pretty good. I try to write a little too---and the online journaling is doing wonders. When I'm not at work (and sometimes when I am) I'm researching, reading, scouting, looking for anything and everything that could spark an idea. A new series of pictures. Something I could enter into an art show. Submit to a magazine. Something to add to my book.
*sigh* It'll happen. I just have to stick to it. And I think I'm on the right path. I just have to keep my balance and don't get off track.
Here are a couple quotes I ran across today that seemed to fit:
“I wanted to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.”---Carlos Castaneda
"All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door."---Albert Camus
And here's a picture:
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