Creative Process - Intention

Red Tail Hawk by J. Binford-Bell

Yes, this is the second blog in the same day when I specifically stated that my intention was to do a blog a week on the creative process. But there I was walking around with my camera in my hand and thinking about intention.

I had my camera on the walk so my intention must be to take a picture or two or three though I will be honest and admit I have sometimes walked for hours and never lifted it to focus. But I have made myself a promise this year to take the camera with me everywhere (except when I intend deliberately not to take it but that is another blog) so I was out on my morning walk with the dogs and the Nikon D90 went with us. I don't, however, always take the entire camera bag with me. It gets heavier every time I have any money to spend. But I had been using my wide angle of late for those pond reflections featured earlier. I changed to my long lens this morning, checked the battery and the memory card.

My intention was clearly to not take sweeping vistas but to focus more narrowly on my world. My 70mm to 300 mm lens is good for long shots and oddly enough macros. I was looking for evidence that spring has begun to emerge from beneath the melted snow.

Great Mullen sprout

And it can get up close and personal with the pollen blossoms on the tall aspen trees. It was also a desire of mine to get a picture to post on Facebook.

Aspens in Spring by J. Binford-Bell

This photo above was to illustrate that aspens do bloom and that is why we are all sneezing currently. Amazing the number of people that only visit in the summer that have no idea why us locals all bemoan sneeze season. This is it. It was suppose to be a straight forward informational photograph but obviously subconsciously I wondered if one can make such a photograph interesting?

But I digress. We were talking intention. There were several intentions guiding me this morning, 1) use another lens, 2) get a photo of the tall aspens and their pollen pods, 3) look for distant wild life. If number 3 had been my only intention I would have walked around for quite a while not taking a picture. The Red Tailed Hawk didn't show up until I was finally back in my driveway.

My Neighbor

In short I think intention can be very different than focus. You can hold more than one intention in your mind at a time and therefore allow for serendipity. But had I gone out solely focused on snapping a picture of a hawk I would have set up on a tripod in a blind and probably not seen anything worth taking a picture of.

I think the same could apply to painting. If you narrow your focus on only one subject or one approach to that subject you may miss an awful lot of creative happenstance.

Creative Process - Just Do

Ice Bloom by J. Binford-Bell

When I was writing all the how-to-write books advocated sitting in front of a typewriter or computer for a set number of hours. At that time the blank word processing screen could be hidden behind a solitaire game but now you can so fill you computer screen with nonsense you will not know the word processor is awaiting your first line.

But I think it is all about intention. You sit before the computer with the intention of writing. Now I sit in front of the computer with that intention, dry dark rooming the perfect photograph, and coming up with an idea for a painting. Oh, and press releases for my work, and finding new exhibits or venues, shopping for equipment for the camera or materials for painting. So even the intention and purpose has gotten blurred.

I started this blog, in the beginning, to explore the creative process and then I got into just showcasing my work, allowing a venue for my poems, etc. I am lucky some weeks when I post one poem or one new photograph and sometimes that is in order to have something (anything) to link into G+ of Face Book. Keep that audience interested!

This blog is a promise to return here more frequently and back to my original direction at least once a week. More blogs on the Creative Process. And in customary blogger egotism I am doing it mostly for me. We teach what we most need to learn. Today it is INTENTION.

And I a finding intention is not just sitting in front of my time wasting computer. And it is not sitting in front of it. It is focusing on what I intend to do while here - or not here. At the moment the intention of photography is best served with camera in hand and an assignment be it outside or inside. This week my assignment has been reflections in ponds (and an accidental remnant of ice here and there).

Brightside down  by J. Binford-Bell

Magique at Pond's Edge by J. Binford-Bell

The weather has been great outside and with the ice just melted the ponds have been like mirrors in the morning. But more than just capturing reflections it has been about composition. How much can you reduce the image to heighten it. And of course the object in the foreground to give scale and depth.

In Brightside down I cropped off the tops of the real trees. And of all the photos of reflections in the pond the one with Magique in the front held the most magic. And then there was the one where Magique chased the geese who flew in the pond and messed the reflections all up.

Sunrise Geese by J. Binford-Bell

With art, be it photography or paint, you sometimes get what you get. The artist will recognize the happy accident. But unless you are in the studio with your paint or in the field with your camera, and dog, you won't get any happy accidents at all.

So my new intention is to not sit as much in front of the computer unless my intention is dry darkroom or a blog on the creative process.