Blogging and the things that make us more alive

No artist is pleased… There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive.......

Martha Graham

Photoblogging has brought me deep into the world of light and mystery, ordinary everyday beauty, friendship across the world and back on a path to writing. It's been every week now for almost 5 years.    

This year was my fourth to be in the final of the annual Irish Blog Awards. Each time it has sent me on a bit of a wobble, something that I don't enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I love sharing what I create with you. But judging and competing? It reminds me too much of waiting outside the door of the Oral Irish Exam in the Leaving Cert; sets my poor nerves on edge!

Building a space to be creative is why I blog. I get to own and nurture my own artistic apprenticeship. I can share with you out of love and vocation, and still be the one who benefits most of all from the whole process. I gain the satisfaction, connection, learning, progression and pleasure from the work I do. I can barely even call what I do here work, it's actually a lot more like play.....

So I did in fact win the Silver Award for photography in the Blog Awards. Thank you to all of you who supported and voted for me through the early stages and those who judged and organised the event. 

And a special shout out to all the finalists, nominees, and bloggers everywhere who are part of this creative Irish Blogging Community doing what "keeps us marching and makes us more alive".

If you love the veils of early morning fog visit the Mist Gallery 

Tiny dewy rainbows

Today I'm re-posting these tiny dewy rainbows from 2012.

Would you like to join me in a moment of reflection? While we both take a slow deep breath?

And while we continue to breathe, here are some explorations of contemplative photography practice

And while I was breathing deeply I won Silver in the Blog Awards for photography Yay!!!!

We are terrified, and we are brave #dayofthegirl

"We are terrified, and we are brave. "

Elizabeth Gilbert

Am I the photographer who writes? Am I the writer who takes pictures? Almost 5 years ago I began to blog. Writing would have to be part of it, but I would never, ever call myself a writer.....I would be a photo blogger.....

The first steps were so terrifying that I blogged anonymously. In 2012 I was invited to host the @Ireland twitter account and decided I would have to come out of my shell. Gradually I became comfortable with the tag "blogger," won a couple of awards for the photography and happily continued. 

From the age of about four I had filled lined copybooks with stories (about sad things mostly) illustrated with colouring pencil drawings. Brene Browne says that about 80% of adults have a shaming story from their past of which 50% are about their creativity. Well I too have mine, about "writing" but it happened much later during my teen-age years.

I had written a school essay about a young poet I had a crush on. (He grew up to be the real deal but that's neither here nor there.) I quoted what I thought was a wonderful line about Dylan Thomas in this essay, "as happy as the grass is green." To this day I'm not sure whether Dylan Thomas, my poet with the long hair or my 16 year old self actually said that??? Anyway when the essays were given back I was a sick with anticipation. I had gushed, I had strayed from the text we were given, I had shown something of my vulnerability. 

Our English Teacher used to stand on the podium, open each essay, bark a result and mutter a short comment. When she came to mine, she didn't open it or comment. She threw the copy book at me spitting one word, "Trite!" The strongest possible message that I needed to shut up the fledgeling voice which somehow through innocence had gotten loose. 

Later she took me aside and gave me a lecture about doing well in the exam and sticking to the tried and tested formulae. I don't think any of this was done out of meanness at all. It was done out of fear for my future. A girl needed to hide her feelings, know how to protect herself from silly notions and get enough of an education to be employable. 

You might think that the Art Teacher was a bit more encouraging as I ended up going to Art College? Strange thing is, I often saw other girls being undermined or "shamed" in similar ways about their art work. By the time I left school I felt both abandoned and free. There was a complete lack of support but there was also a lack of expectation.   

For some reason, I never fully gave up on that precious space where I mooched with paint, a camera or even words. Thanks to my English Teacher I moved into the visual world, and thanks to blogging there is now a space to reclaim my love of language too.

Best of both worlds; a brave photographer who writes AND a terrified writer who takes pictures.......

11th October was International Day of the Girl Child  #dayofthegirl which reminded me of how precious creativity can be to a young girl. 

You can preview my little book on the creative path here

For even more on creativity delve into the brilliant Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert 

And special thanks to the Woodland Girl

There is human time and there is wild time

There is human time and there is wild time.......

Clarissa Linkola Estes

This morning it's wild time. A slow motion sunrise, where nature's spinners have draped everything in layers of lace. 

Barely present. Fragile and momentary. 

Later when the day fully arrives, dew drops are blow dried from the faces of leaves. Webs disappear into the foliage and this sleepy photographer is re-absorbed into the human world.

Back in human time I'm reading Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers by Leonard Koren.  

"Wabi-sabi (a Japanese philosophy) is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional."

I remember when I started this blog my tagline was "celebrating the ordinary and the everyday in a place where nothing much happens."  I must be a wabi-sabi photographer (of an Irish rural variety maybe?) as every page of this carefully crafted book feels like a comfortable old pair of slippers.......

So I am re-inspired to sink into the elusive and the mysterious. To believe again that beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness. That in the wild time and the human time there is always space for perfect imperfection. 

More about Contemplative Photography here