Posts tagged "photography"

A Year of Creative Endeavors

1. In 2023, I got to explore a whole year of creativity, namely in film photography, photographic darkroom printing, piano and saxophone-playing, and drawing
2. Film photography felt like an old friend I was coming back to: I was already shooting film 20 years ago, but dropped off for the digital world
3. In moving to San Francisco, I also found a community of film photography experts and enthusiasts around whom I could build a creative practice
4. It's much easier to continue pursuing a hobby when there are events to attend, people to share, and spaces to go to for it
5. I crossed off the vast majority of items on my learning wishlist for photography: I learned to bulk roll film, I learned to shoot medium format, I learned to develop film in all processes, I learned to scan film and also print (in a darkroom, and digitally)
6. I'm now reasonably confident in all of those things, enough for me to be able to print photos for art shows
7. Not sure where I want to go with the printing thing, but it came in handy when I also, in the last two months of the year, started teaching photography at a community space in my neighborhood
8. I gave disposable film cameras to participants (who are either unhoused or who mostly live in the supportive housing in the area), who then went forth and took photos of their lives and experiences
9. A local film lab helped us develop the negatives, and I printed out a selection of participants' photos for a small private art show at the community space. I am now working on documenting and showing some of this work online and will share it when I am ready!
10. In developing a 'creative practice', I've come to see that the work I do in photography or in music (or even meditation) all have similar roots
11. It's all about establishing a regular practice on something in my life where, maybe I won't ever be a professional, but it's something that I personally really enjoy and can learn from
12. It's enough joy to be able to work on these hobbies that bring me peace and solitude
13. When I sit in a completely dark darkroom, that's one of the only times I am away from a screen
14. The hour or three that I spend in one helps me center my thoughts around creating something beautiful that can bring happiness to someone else (my wife, for example, really likes having prints so she can decorate our home with it. I also love giving prints to friends)
15. Given that I stepped away from photography for a decade or so because I was burned out by the practice of commercial photography, which killed my love for it and which also made me uninterested in picking up a camera for a very long time, I'm very happy with... this, whatever this is!

Feeding My Soul

Maybe some day, I'll think of the years between 2009 and 2019 as a lost decade. It was a decade of development, when I came of age, when I left home, when I made my home in so many different places in the world, where I tried on different ways of being, as if they were seasonal coats, or swimwear.

Things are different now.

When I was least expecting it, king tides subsided and became gentle lakes. The weather is rarely frosty or humid, it's mostly even-tempered, and cool. I have time to sleep, exercise, meditate, and eat well: I am no longer scurrying from here to there. I know how lucky I am.

I got to recover from a chronic illness that not only took away my physical abilities for a long while, I also got to bounce back mentally from it. From insomniac mania, I now have a well-rested, even-keeled, decently-paced life (and personality). When I think back to those years, to 2012 and right after especially, I wonder how anyone ever kept up with me. I barely did. (Autoimmune diseases are a bitch. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.)

I have work that is engaging, challenging, and evenly paced. I have the weekends to discover and explore. Surprising to everyone, especially to myself, my new hobbies are fun, slow and old: birding. Cycling slowly. Walking slowly. Hiking. Being in nature. If I'm optimizing for anything (throwback to my startup days!), that's it.

So many weekends spent around the Bay Area wandering about with friends and people I love. Sometimes I look at birds. Sometimes I look at fungi. Many times, I am just happy and so damned pleased to be out and about, and alive.

In line with the theme of 'finding joy in things I have always loved', like playing my piano, saxophone, clarinet for fun, I started picking up my camera again. Over there, on my microblog, I'm documenting all the ways in which my brain gets to have fun. I've forgotten how nice it is to just make things, tell stories, and do things for fun.

I'm done with the hustle.

The hustle that I want to spend time and energy on is the one that's about nourishing my soul. I'm working on some long term writing and photography projects. While it's tempting to think of 2009 - 2019 as the lost years in which I did not do very much creatively, I think it's given me the experiences and time to really become the kind of artist that I want to be. In recovering from chronic illness and hustle-related illnesses, my mind is now clearer than before: I have the headspace now to work and make things the way I want.

It's still too early to share what I'm working on, but know that things I do in this space will always have something to do with one or all of the following: immigrants, California, India, Southeast Asia, food, culture, festivals, climate, nature, mushrooms, birds, queerness, bicycles, music, and maybe more. Those are all of the keywords to my life, these are all of the things that keep me going. Until then, snippets of my creative brain can be found at the microblog, and sometimes also on Mastodon (especially at the #FilmIsNotDead hashtag that I sometimes use).

So instead of focusing on status, success, money, or hustle and grind culture, I'm going to explore all the ways in which I can immerse myself deeply in all of the things that I love, some or all of them at once. And I feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to do this.