Changing Your Preceptions
After a few days of taking photos in Portland, and talking to a lot of really helpful and interesting people I resumed my efforts to pick up trash around my neighborhood. I have been doing quite a bit of research this week and I was feeling accomplished until silly me misplaced my memory card containing all of the past two weeks photo shoots. So after searching and searching my home and car, where I know it must be, I finally accepted the fact that I probably won’t find it in time to use for the next peer critique.
I have been spending a lot of time on doing reflective writing after picking up trash and I decided that that’s where I would go with this week’s photos. Thoughts that I have had a lot recently is how important it is for me to be aware are really be conscious and open my eyes to what is around me. I went out and spent a few hours in the sun and in the forest getting new images for this week. I tried not to dwell on the fact that I didn’t have the old images. I have been picking up a lot of trash and it starts to make you see only the ugly in things. I was only seeing the dirty smelly trash and not the beautiful forest and nature around me. That was until I stumbled across a few structures in the forest where someone took the time to make it beautiful.
A wonderful wind chime sort of thing out of silverware and old rusty parts gave me that little push of inspiration I needed to help me see the nicer side of what I have been doing.
It helped me to see that when I am picking up trash maybe I could be reflecting on all of my surroundings and not just the bad parts about it. In doing this just even just for the rest of the afternoon when i was picking up trash made it so much more enjoyable and insightful. Its amazing how this one wind chime changed so much for me, but i’m really glad i saw it. This whole experience has constantly made me think about how I should really be more aware of what’s around me and how I can make a conscious effort to make a difference no matter how small. So I guess my main concept I wanted to get across in my photos this week is to keep an eye out for what’s there and what you could do to make a difference.