the break

 
It’s been two weeks since my last shoot. I haven’t picked up a camera once in these two weeks. I didn’t photograph my children joyfully unwrapping their gifts, twinkling holiday lights or the very festive looking carolers who appeared one evening at my front door. My camera’s are collecting dust and surely wondering what has happened to me.

It’s a well deserved break, I’ve told myself. I needed this time to step back from photography, enjoy the holidays with family, and contemplate the inevitable changes looming with the coming new year. Since the end of November I looked forward to this hiatus, sweetly imagining the freedom from work related stress and opportunity to relax a bit and do more as I pleased.

But just like too many days without sunshine or a vitamin deficiency, before I realize what’s happened I begin to feel sluggish, even a little down. The sight of stretched out slants of late afternoon winter sun, or a small child with soulful eyes passing by brings about a longing that torments me with thoughts of what I could be doing…….what I should be doing. And still I don’t pick up my camera. Why is this?

The best I’ve been able to come up with is that photography asks something of me that my “thinking self” is often hesitant to agree to, particularly after a period of time when that part of me has had full reign. For me, picking up a camera is an agreement to for a moment surrender everything………fear, control, and most of all my rampant thinking…….in order that I might be fully present. There is no other way to enter into it but nakedly and openly, and I always resist at first.

In a few days I will be forced to once again pick up my camera if I haven’t already done so on my own. I will be shy with it at first, feelings of vulnerability will create uneasiness and a bit of clumsiness. But I know what happens next, and imagining it now temporarily lifts me from the doldrums I’ve recently been experiencing. Every single time it’s taking a leap off a large cliff and realizing I’ve wings after all.

~Cynthia