Occasionally a piece comes along that reminds me exactly what it is I love about creating art. It doesn’t have to be the best piece I ever made (usually it isnt’t). It doesn’t have to be something others love. It just has to remind me of the joy of creating in my chosen medium.
This piece, Meet Me at the Tree, is one of those pieces.
It reminded me of the two things I love about iPhone photography…
First, the immediacy and availability of it, which allows me to capture the world I move through. I was walking from my car to the office building where I work my corporate job, and there it was: This cool twig, which looked like a stylized tree, planted along a crack in the asphalt of the parking lot. A little scene in itself. I pulled out my iPhone, framed and photographed a few images, and then went on my way. (My coworkers think I’m crazy.)
And then the second thing I love, transforming it into something altogether different in my editing process using iPhone apps. Taking the image as the raw material to create a new type of art, related to the starting photograph but comepletely different. No requirement to tie to the original “reality” of it, I can transform it into a completely different expression. The world I see becomes a world I imagine.
And I am giddy with it! This is what I love about art. This is what I love about my medium. The ability to see beyond my current reality. The transformation of one thing into another.
I am filled with the excitement of the possibilities. What might I see and transform today?