For our days are fleeting…
Amidst the emails, applications, networking, pitches and phone calls, I sometimes forget that I am in New York! As I left the apartment I’m staying at in Dumbo yesterday, my eye caught the Manhattan skyscrapers across the East River. I couldn’t look away. I’d grown accustomed to the city so rapidly I’d forgotten how unique it is. (It might also have had something to do with the unusually warm weather. That will generally relax you enough to take in the present moment.)
Whilst I believe in putting your head down for concentrated and focused work sessions, it can be counter productive in creative fields. When Peter Weir taught us at AFTRS, he told us African pop music was one of his sources of inspiration. Not understanding the lyrics helped his mind roam free.
I am enjoying how open-ended and free life is at the moment. I do feel like a bit of a drifter, sojourning through various houses, friendship groups and workplaces. I meet wonderful new people and take each day for the opportunity it presents. Strategizing how to break in to a new market is a fun challenge within itself. Freelance connections take some time to build. The hard thing is knowing where to look, and more so, knowing what to do first. There are so many tasks that can consume your time, and not all are necessarily essential.
I was so inspired by the view of the city that I allowed myself the freedom to place aside the obligation I felt to email, pitch and develop, and gave myself the freedom to play. I took myself down to the water for some long-exposure self-portraits – the kind that will likely be no good to anyone but my sense of self-expression.
This picture is my statement of how each season of our lives is fleeting; that our bodies will be gone before our landscape is.
Experience this present moment. Savour it. Remember it. For our days are fleeting, and our time to act is now.
This picture was taken shortly before sunset on ISO 50, f22, 1sec shutter with a circular polarizer on a 24mm lens, full-power speedlite on the second curtain sync, on a tripod with a wireless trigger on a 2 second delay.