The bird feeder outside my home office window in Arizona gets a lot of action.
It’s quite a performance. Earlier this year, I was staring at the birds, I wondered what kind of project I should start during my visit. Dawn broke on Marblehead.
I built bird blind and using a variety of formats to record the most “poetic” of moments at the bird feeder. It was interesting, but after I processed and scanned the images, something was missing. I wanted to get the sense of grace the birds showed going about their eating. That wasn’t super hard to do, but by freezing the moment, something was lost.
While I like these photos, I don’t think they capture what I was going for, which was the dance of flight. I got close, but this project needs to be made with video. Watching birds is a peaceful thing. You get to see relationships at play, power struggles, and partnership. So video is the next step.
I learned that the process of creation might be a little longer than I thought. Also, I don’t have to throw out these negatives, they probably will reveal something later on that I just can’t see now. Not everything I do needs to be a complete project. I can have fits and starts along the way. It’s fine to explore with a camera.
I tend to put too much pressure on myself to make something amazing, and that is hard to live up to. I can still show the work I do, even if it isn’t perfect or a complete idea. That’s the creative process.