Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Creativity and Adventure

How often do we put Creativity and Adventure in the same sentence?  Not often, but for me they are one in the same.  Surviving adventures requires imagining creative solutions on the fly.  Producing great images while dealing with variable lighting and subjects, weather and creative obstacles requires the ability to imagine creative solutions on the fly.  As a photographer the tools are technical.  Mechanical and electrical devices, and the physics of light.  Dealing with dynamic snow, ice and weather the tools are also technical.  Mechanical ascenders, electrical GPS and the laws of gravity and atmosphere.  In the end both require the creativity to bring it all together and proceed to the end.

FEAR, often enters into both endeavors.  Obviously one of the above scenarios is a little more deadly than the other, but in both, fear can stop you from achieving your goal.  On a mountain fear is your friend.  It is the part of you that realizes the objective hazards that always linger, and doesn’t foolishly deny their existence.  This enables you to deal with hazards prudently and carry on as safely as possible.  Amazingly for some these types of fears are easier to deal with than the deep dark inner fears that limit our creativity.  Fears that many of us don’t even know we have, much less understand.  The walls that we build to protect ourselves from our fears can be just as treacherous to your life as a weak snow bridge over a giant crevasse.  For is leaving in fear living at all?
When time weakens the grips of fear, what is left behind?  Your truth, the truth.

As my endeavors begin to come to fruition truth is the only constant.  Strangely, my experiences, be they on a mountain, behind a camera, renovating a historic property, or trying to be a good husband and father, all hold the same lesson for my life.  It is the realization of this unifying truth that makes my evolution as an adventurer and creator possible.

Adam