Things are Getting Real with Reality Reframed

15 Sep Things are Getting Real with Reality Reframed

Over the past few months, I’ve made a commitment to myself to start to show glimpses into my real life; my chaos, my clutter, my learning curves, my process. More than ever before I’ve been hyper-aware of the damage that can be done by taking in too much perfection. It’s just not good for anyone to browse blogs, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest when picture after picture shows a perfect life everywhere else, for everyone else but us. Although I’m pretty good at not putting on my comparison pants, I have decided that I don’t ever want anyone to think that I must have a perfect life because of the images I share. Not that my images are perfect, but I do work really hard and showing the magic of my life. It makes me happy. Even still, it’s not showing the big picture.

I’ve grappled with how to accomplish sharing the visual reality of my life without scrapping all of my artistic sensibilities. After all, first and foremost, I consider myself an artist and it takes a lot of thought and creative energy to make my art and so of course, I want to share the art that I make and that I love. I mean, what artist wants to show work they don’t like? It’s not that I don’t like my life. Not at all. I love my life. But, I don’t love everything about my life. In fact, I struggle with many things, like mood swings and exhaustion, disorganization and clutter. But, my life is my art and the photographs I take are artistic expressions of who I am and the parts of my life that I do love. Each photo is a little snippet of how I choose to see my life, despite the struggle, despite the mess. My fear however is that snippet, that tiny slice of what I capture in my frame may not show enough of what the reality is.

Light bulb moment.

I figure instead of abandoning the art I love, I will show the reality along side of it. This is how the idea of reality reframed came about; sharing a snapshot of the bigger picture first and right next to it the snippet of I choose to look at it. I’ve never really done anything quite like this before but by revealing this part of the picture I hope that anyone watching will feel less alone in their own imperfect life. And I also hope that I can really drive the point home that you can excavate photo-worthy magic from everyday life, no matter how messy it gets. It’s part of the practice of elevating the everyday.

I guess with that, it’s time to start sharing my reality reframed.

So there it is. Three shots that show the real and the reframed version of the landscape around here. I didn’t move anything around to get the reframed shots. I just found something lovely amidst the mess and got in nice and close. It’s how I take most of my pictures, I frame the parts of my life that I love before I click the shutter. And, one last thing; if you think it’s easy to share the reality that’s as messy as this, you’re wrong. My stomach is in knots. No one wants to openly share a look behind the curtain, do they? Well, regardless how difficult it may be, I’m doing it anyway. Gulp.

Now, I’d better hit publish before I change my mind.