Monday, March 22, 2010

Daily Practice 81/365

Title: "Angular Momentum"
(Click to view larger)

As I near the finish of the first quarter of this year-long exercise, I find myself becoming more aware of potential images as I go along in every day life. Practice should, and does, sharpen one's compositional eye. As I was walking to the parking lot from my office, I noticed an interesting dialogue happening between the sky and the angular shapes of the building. The contrast between the organic and geometric shapes brings the nature of both into sharp relief.

When the end of March comes, my plan is to move on to a "phase two". Phase one was to establish and keep the commitment to make images each day. I think of it as being a "warm up" to more serious work, the way one might take a large sheet of newsprint and some soft pencils or charcoal and warm up the arm and mind by making large and small lines, curves, circles and ovals with big gestures before embarking on a more deliberate drawing. My daily practice so far is similar to keeping a sketchbook, taking the odd 15 or 30 minutes of time to make quick sketches to record ideas.

I want to take a retrospective look back at the work accomplished so far to form the basis for the next phase. I'm going to look over my "sketch book" of ideas to see what peaks my interest as the beginning of a longer-term project. I will probably pick two or three ideas, so that on any given day I can direct my daily practice to furthering which ever project is accommodated by the limitations imposed by the nature of that particular day. I've been missing doing dark room work, so one project will be completely analogue based and there will be days when the image making will be happening in the dark room rather than with a camera. I see this change as a natural progression in the notion of the daily practice - that some days it might be directed at collecting images (sketches) for future consideration, while on other days there will be more time and thought directed to working on an on-going project.

1 comment:

J. M. Golding said...

The dialogue you saw between sky and building comes across very clearly in your photo. I imagine you enjoying this new awareness, and I feel inspired by it. I like the structure you're creating for your 365 project - it sounds like the kind of thing that will take the process to a whole new level.