Keep on keeping on
So, I was supposed to be sharing that I'd been out bush and made lots of photos and wow what a great time. But, due to the floods, I was unable to head out to the bush.
For those who aren't in Australia - the last, I don't know, two months it has been raining steadily. Many parts of the East of Australia (where I live and make art) are wet, wet, wet. Many parts have had bad flooding. Even places that haven't flooded have had to make changes due to the volume of water.
So, my plans were cancelled.
I had this plan, basically, to spend 10 days making photos. 10 days straight. Over time, I've become a feast or famine artist. I'm either making a LOT of photos with nothing else on, or the camera is gathering dust on the shelf.
It wasn't always this way.
When I started, I think like most people, I was out walking with a camera all the time. Taking pictures of anything and everything. This was quite fun for a few years but, around 2016, I realised that I'd kind of run out of steam and made nothing. I had reams of negatives and images, but what did it mean? What did it say?
Nothing.
Since then, I've transitioned to the sort of artist who thinks of ideas and interests and then finds how to photograph these. It's not a perfect process, but generally it's worked better for me.
But, with the trip being cancelled (and the project now put back 6 months, since you'd have to be fucking insane to spend summer shooting in flooded far west New South Whales and South Australia, 50 degrees and infinite mosquitoes no thanks) I decided 'fuck it, just walk and take photos'.
I guess I still wanted to find ways to practice, play and enjoy the medium, even though I'd just be making fodder. I've been walking a lot with my camera, even dusting off the 35mm I've not used much.
The first walk or two I was a bit bored: just shooting trees and sunshine (not that there's been much of that recently). But after a few walks, now I'm feeling a bit more loose and just enjoying myself.
Like I said, these are not photos that I consider to be, like, good or productive, but I just felt like 'cmon Matt, get the fuck out there'.
I've even booked in some time in the darkroom, which is NOT a part of my process at all, but is always fun and playful. Again, I just didn't want to end the year with very few photos made and on a bit of a downer.
I've also started printing some of my favourite photos from this year on craft paper (brown, recycled, thin paper) as a way to sort of relive and display old stuff in a new way. It's, again, kind of silly, but a lot of creativity is just kicking the can down the road until it gets somewhere worth going.
Generally, I think it's important to keep the main thing the main thing. In my case that's trying to make new, good, interesting art. That's the main thing.
But, sometimes things stall out and the plan just falls apart. There's no way to recapture the time that's lost, but maybe there are ways to find something worth doing, even if it's not the main thing.