11:21 PM
I set out this morning with the laughable task of organizing the garage. Suffice it to say, that is far from done. But significant in roads were made. After I took stock of the disarray and clutter. Then made a quick shopping list. We needed storage containers. Many storage containers. Off to the hardware store!
After we returned, I rooted through my current personal bins to see what could be set free. Turns out not much could be donated or sold. One bin, though, stored some of my old cameras. Mind you, they are all digital, but anything greater than ten years is an old camera. My iPhone outpaces their image capture quality quite easily. I emptied one very large bin quiclkly. This was the first these cameras had seen daylight in nearly two years.
Then I took a look around the garage again. I still had a set of studio lights, light boxes and umbrellas. Bulky, cumbersome, and in general disorganized items. Those had not been used in ten years. Time for them to be set free, too.
I dragged those things from place to place since 2007 and had done so little with them. But I was a “Photographer!” These things were an extension of me. If it wasn’t for these things, what would I be? How would others recognize what or who I am?
Giving up the cameras was difficult. I’ve owned multiple cameras since I was in college. They were the tools I chose to express myself with. I had a few good captures with them, but in all honesty, I was not as great a photographer as I wanted to think I was.
I’m not giving up photography. I still have a DSLR with multiple lenses in my office. The craft still has a function in my life. Giving the studio lights, accessories, and bags of cameras to Goodwill though unyoked me from a cart I’ve been dragging around since finishing my Master of Fine Arts in 1996. I’ve unhitched myself from an expectation that I must make great things with this craft. I unburdened myself of detritus, self-imposed guilt over things that I am not doing.
I had this self-image of a Photographer Artist. It’s been a part of my mental DNA since high school. Since I was a teenager, I was never far from my camera. I turned my bedroom into a darkroom. Being a photographer artist was never a doubt.
I held onto all of that equipment because I didn’t want that certainty to die. What I hadn’t realized until today was that keeping all of that equipment was just slowing me down. Holding onto old dreams can keep new dreams from flourishing. In photography terms, I was living a double-exposed life. Clearly there are two images in the frame, but neither of them are clear enough to be fully recognizable.
I may never be that photographer artist that I trained so hard to be in college and grad school, but I am one more step closer to be the genuine Ted.
