Getting Your Hands Dirty

My wife left me alone with the kids today so she could get some work done. I had no idea what we were going to do. I had two options; we could spend Sunday as it was meant to be spent – relaxing and getting ready for the week, or we could go out and do something. After a few minutes of lazying it up, we decided to venture out to the burrito place for some lunch. While we were there, we spotted one of our neighbors. Their daughter came and ate lunch with us so she could hang out with the kids. During lunch we talked about all of the things going on around town – there were two different Oktoberfest celebrations as well as a handful of pumpkin patches we could explore. After I shot down their idea to go roller skating (I did not feel like being pulled down every time one of the kids falls, which is like every five feet), I offered up a trip to the park.

My daughter, the social butterfly, invited her little friend to come to the park with us. Now we were four – I was outnumbered by three-to-one. I took a deep breath and we loaded into my car to head out to the park. The kids had a blast, and I had fun taking pictures of them playing. At a certain point, I had to come to grips and put the camera away so I could pay closer attention to the kids. Also, once we decided to hit the paddle boats and kayaks, I didn’t want to have any distractions (although I couldn’t stop looking at the great colors of the trees reflecting in the lake or composing in my mind the best shot of a great blue heron that was perched on the shore).

I do have a point to this story, and it’s two-fold. Number one is reiterating the point of yesterday’s post, which is that you need to go out and do something. Get started now – don’t put it off, whatever it is. Life is meant to be lived every day, and when given the opportunity to get up and go out, you should take that over laziness every time! You never know what your reward will be when you put yourself out there, but I can guarantee that sitting around the house doing nothing will get you nothing! Number two refers to the title of today’s post – that is getting your hands dirty. You know when a kid is having fun? When they look like they’ve been bathing in mud. As an artist, you need to get out and play in the mental mud. Try things that you normally wouldn’t try. Don’t be scared to get your shoes wet or your camera dirty. Get in there and get that shot – get as close as you can to make it work.

I read a story this morning that was both shocking and understandable in a sick sort of way. A New York Times war photographer named Joao Silva continued to take pictures after stepping on a land mine in Afghanistan and blowing off his legs. The man lived through such a horrible experience and was conscious enough to pull a camera up to his eye and photograph the aftermath of the explosion. That to me is the sign of a true artist – a crazy man with a sick dedication to his art. It makes most of us pale in comparison with our pictures of beautiful scenes and decisive moments. That man captured his own life altering moment. Hopefully nobody reading this will ever come close to enduring such a horror, but he managed to turn to his craft as a means to work his way though it and for that I can’t even express how amazing I think he is. Here I was, doing what I thought was the right thing by putting the camera away so I could pay more attention to my kids when entering a potentially dangerous situation in the water, and this guy is shooting in a war zone. I can’t compare myself to a guy like this, not even close, but I can certainly be inspired by him and his sacrifice.

Next time you second-guess pulling over the car to capture a fantastic cloud formation, or shy away from the idea of kicking off your shoes and getting knee deep in the water to get a few feet closer to an egret, remember that you will most likely not get maimed by an explosive and your discomfort is quite minimal and will be forgotten after you take home that shot that everyone else was too shy to get.