Onwards and Outwords
This is another chapter in my informal learning of photography. It could be called:
Looking for New Learning Paths.
All goes onwards and outwords
nothing collapses
And to die is different from what anyone supposed
and luckier.
(The word's are Whitman's; the line arrangement is the way I read it today).
I admit I do miss the Dailyshoot. I've learnt a lot with it as well as from the fellow players. Oddly enough, I welcome this end, because it is pushing me further into refining what I value about creating images and proceed to seize my learning in my own hands.
I've been exploring what other former dailyshooters are doing now and I've found the Scavenge Challenge to be a nice twist and trigger for those who found the repetition of the photo assignments was a bit of a turn off. I'm giving it a try.
Here's my first post-processed photo with Picasa. (Maybe one day I'll regret posting this for bad quality, but it's a start, a stepping stone.) The box of photo tricks wants to be opened.
I kept looking for prompts. I found that Gwen came up with a project of her own creation. It is simple and powerful.
Her project is called a 100 Possibilities and it is basically to shoot a book in diverse creative contexts. Variations on a theme was also used by BZTraining , who solved every single dailyshoot assignment with his two dogs. It rendered great results in spite of (or with the help of) his self-imposed rule of the game. The most important thing is, as Gwen states it, to help yourself "push boundaries for a while".
Browsing the project, I came across a poetry quote that someone else provided in full in the comments. Funny that what had actually made me click on it was the image of the magnifying glass, which I thought I would use for one my own photos.
The interesting thing is that Gwen has found a way to prompt herself. She is to find new contexts for her favourite book for a 100 days. Talk about keeping it simple, with a constraint that enables creativity. Her take away from the Dailyshoot is not just about photography, but about autonomy.
Inspiring.
Why not? And why not combine it with bits of the poetry I love so much I thought of those long Song of Myself catalogues that could easily become postcards and then, perhaps a video. So in my fledgeling thoughts of mashing up interests that drive my passion, I stopped to think that it couldn't be me the first one to have come up with that idea. After all, Whitman is cosmic.
A quick search in Flick groups for Whalt Whitman led me to a group by students at a university with a link to the full project called Looking for Whitman. The site is full owesome bits of inspiration that can move a brain muscle or two. More about it later, for the project is worthy of a separate post.
I recently read somewhere that according to stats (so it must be true?), it would take three lifetimes to read all of the Internet content available today. Why do we stay on the same circles of friends then? Is it because they are the best curators we have found or because we are sometimes a bit lazy to push ourselves away from our comfort zone?
And yet.
Today, as I set my mind firmly into going away from the recommendations of my Twitter stream this morning, convincing myself that I am trying to pursue what I'd like to do with my creativity, I land on a project where Jim Groom, who is in my trusted network of curators and inspirers, has played a part.
Wait a second. I was on his website last night to create my first MacGuffin assignment! How come I've been going round in circles? My intention was to sail the vast open web, to go elsewhere, far out. This doesn't seem to follow the logic of serendipity. Six grades separation maybe?
I'd call it an online dream.
Over a month ago, I know Jim read and liked something I said to Alan about the mysterious nature of our connections, about the Internet being like a dream, only it's a real one.
Jim responded via Twitter:
Come to think of it, it might have been a disguised assignment...
Done.
Labels: dailyshoot, ds106, jim groom, learning photography, photography, what whitman
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