This used to be my resolution time. I sat at my desk and evaluated my successes and failures of the passing year. Then, I would jot down my New Year’s resolutions. It was as if those few words embedded on the LCD screen of my iPad would change my photographic life forever. Not anymore!
I learnt that it is not about resolutions, plans or even aspirations – all elusive and fleeting. It is more about finding the courage to let go.
I know, it feels so good to make resolutions. Sometimes they are as grand as changing careers, starting your own firm or succeeding in a project, getting a new camera or taking just one blockbuster image. For many it is a feeling of belonging to a group, a way of thinking or a certain style.
Either way, resolutions are usually flags planted in front of us in the hope they will boost us to follow the right path. Then, as the New Year progresses, we become so engrossed with reaching those flags that we stop being ourselves – we become efficiency machines, gurus of steps and improvements to put us on a pedestal in our times.
Resolutions work on an industrial, business or maybe even a personal level. However, if viewed as a creative endeavour, photography needs exactly the opposite. It needs tension and conflict, chaos, self-awareness and, most importantly, freedom from resolutions, concepts and photographic genres.
The best way to reach this freedom is to let go. When you let go, you start feeling and seeing again. No, I am not talking about those big, ambitious tasks. I am talking about those small moments of passion and rage. When was the last time you shouted out at the top of your lungs to your wife or lover “I LOVE YOU”? When was the last time you took your children to the playground and slid with them not holding onto the bars? When was the last time you wrote a poem or a love letter? When was the last time you threw out Excel sheets, your appointment book and your cell phone and ran outside in the middle of the night to listen to the silence?
In the New Year, I want to roar to the silence and whisper to the light.
No resolutions, please!
IAll imagery shot with the X-E3 paired with the XF 80mm F2.8 or the XF 35mm F1.4
2017 © Olafphoto. All rights reserved.
Happy 2018 new seeing!
…well, just happily renewed is more realistic, I guess…
For everyone!
Olaf, this is a great blog! It gives me a fresh perspective on New Year’s Resolutions! Letting go can take on many forms….letting go of old ways of doing that just don’t “fit” one’s personality any more! Cheers to a New Year full of exciting adventures based on spontaneity and authentic gratitude for life! Bring on 2018!