Doing the Reps
My reasons for pursuing photography are different to most. I take no satisfaction out of visiting a famous location that I saw online and placing my tripod legs into the three holes that were left by the previous visitor. I prefer to create something completely unique from a lesser-known area that I have developed a deep, personal connection with, and I have hope that what I have created will leave my viewers dumbfounded, wondering where it is or, better still, what it is. The idea of raising a question in a viewers’ mind gives my work far greater meaning than any rewards or recognition.
I’m driven to create, among many reasons, by the thought that what I share might just be a catalyst to ignite an ember in the soul of another human being and encourage them to rediscover their own curiosity. One of my primary drivers for practicing Nature photography is my love of personal development, which became apparent to me during a period of intensive emotional and psychological healing inside the walls of a local gym, as I pursued a short-term dream of becoming a bodybuilder between 2018-2019, grinding out ‘sets’ and ‘repetitions’ in pursuit of a stronger looking physique to carry me across the landscape. In a recent conversation with Bill Ward, I was inspired to reflect upon how my two practices; photography and bodybuilding are threads from the same twine.
A Tool for Personal & Spiritual Development
The camera, for me, is a tool for personal and spiritual development. It is, as I wrote in a previous essay, ‘a bridge between two worlds’, connecting my inner landscape to that of the outside world: uniting the soul within to the soul without. Not only has the camera given me a place and purpose here within the landscape of the outer world, but it has led to a deepening of self-awareness and understanding of both the outer and inner landscape. By picking up the camera back in 2018, I decided to begin living more consciously, paying attention to the world around me, observing everything in my surroundings; not only whilst out walking with the camera in hand, but by going about my daily life, too. Photographs are, as Ansel Adams once wrote, a result of ‘all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved’. With these words coming into my awareness early on in my creative journey, I quickly began to awaken to a deeper existence; one in which I lived with intention upon every interaction that I had.
The gifts that have been granted to me through self-expression have far exceeded any of those that I have achieved through business success, competition placements, or further recognition online and in publications. When it comes to my own creative journey, I have achieved the deepest satisfaction through the objective observation of my own development as a human being as I overcome fears, rid myself of shame, use my grief as fuel and transmute my pain through my creative works. In more recent times, I have felt deeply honoured to witness the development of clients on workshop days, one to one tuition sessions, and long-term mentorship programs, as well as, in a few cases, their own healing and process of catharsis.
In pursuit of profit in our modern world, I believe that it is far too easy for a person to lose sight of the importance of ones’ spiritual advancement. In my world, it is imperative that this remains at the forefront of what I do, much to the confusion of many of the business mentors that I have met along my way thus far. I deeply believe in the powers of Nature and the practice of photography as healing modalities that can contribute to the development and wellbeing of the human being in its’ entirety. Nature photography is a holistic practice, uniting the mind, body and spirit as one walks across the landscape on the hunt for a photograph and a resulting story to accompany it. Through the practice of Nature photography, one engages all of the senses, including the sixth sense of intuition; the importance of which is often underestimated in our modern world.
The wide array of benefits for the human being undertaking a search for a photograph, I believe, are yet to be fully appreciated. Though it is commonplace in the world of landscape photography that one focuses on the development of technical, in-camera knowledge, understanding of light, composition, and which papers to select through the printing process, one cannot underestimate what photography can offer for the development of the human being. Through the practice of photography, a person might develop hugely beneficial personal skills that are often overlooked; one might grow in confidence, become more decisive, develop observational skills and a deepened awareness of surroundings and the subtle nuances within the landscape (both external and internal), and, ultimately, through the process, as in my own case, learn to express repressed emotions and adopt creativity as an outlet for much of life’s inevitable trials and tribulations.
The storytelling aspect to the art of photography mentioned earlier is essential to protect and nurture, as it can offer a person a deeper sense of purpose and help them find place as a link in the eternal chain of consciousness. Storytelling is a lost art in our modern world. Once upon a time, we would have gathered around a campfire beneath a starlit sky and traded wisdom and experiences through the stories that we told. As individual strands of thread coming together to weave our wisdom, we would have shared a collective purpose. What greater purpose is there for human beings than to stand as keepers and weavers of wisdom for future generations?
Photography & Nature as an Alternative Therapy
I have contemplated visiting a counsellor at a few different points throughout my life so far. Once when I was a teenager, feeling helplessly lost in a world full of ‘normal’ people that seemed to know which direction to walk and appeared to be without their own troubles and scars. Another time when I was, once again, feeling helplessly lost following the breakdown of my first relationship around my mid-twenties - quite ironically, this was the catalyst for what I now know was my own spiritual awakening, and led to me losing myself to the four walls of the gym for two years before picking the camera up to continue the journey into myself to find sanctuary and deep healing. Thirdly, and most recently, around twelve months ago when I had decided to embark upon a new relationship and sought to deepen my self-awareness and meet new sides to myself, notably that of the ‘man’ that was once a complete mystery to me.
I have, however, for some reason or another, always found myself to have been deterred by what, to me, felt like an unproductive method for dealing with my issues surrounding my sense of self. I was not depressed (beyond what any person might be who was grieving a lost relationship), nor was I imprisoned by feelings of low self-esteem and confidence that were inevitable given my early life experiences. When I thought deeply about it, sitting and talking to someone seemed, to me, to be a complete waste of time and money - especially given that my life experiences, I figured, could only be truly understood by a select few people who might have shared similar life experiences.
I have been a person who has always somehow managed to find answers to my own questions by looking within, and I learnt to listen to my internal voice and navigate using the inner compass from a young age. My ‘feeling lost’ at times throughout my life was just my soul calling to express itself in its’ fullest form, beyond the constraints of society and away from the path that was laid out for me and for those people that I compared myself to earlier on in life; those same people who appeared to ‘know’ in which direction to walk.
Photography has, for me, been a therapeutic practice more than anything, helping me to make sense of myself and this earthly existence. Having grown up without physical connection to my father, I felt a large void inside of myself for many years and had the deepest questions circling around my mind about my identity and place here on earth. The trees have played the role of father, best friend, and therapist over the past few years; the natural world becoming the mirror that I always needed to learn about who I was. My struggles with my sense of identity throughout my younger years were quickly forgotten when I embarked upon the process of filling my void with new experiences and forging myself an identity through the places that I visited and conversations that I engaged in. So began what I can only describe as a process of self-creation.
Doing the Reps - In Pursuit of Self-creation
Preceding my adventure along the path of an artist creating photographs for the world, I walked, for a short while at least, the path of the sculptor. I chose not to work with materials such as stone, clay, or wood, and instead chose to work with my own flesh, blood, and eventually, spirit. Following the breakdown of the before-mentioned relationship back in 2018, I began lifting weights to deal with my emotional pain and offer it a sense of purpose. There is a well-known phrase in the world of bodybuilding that ‘breakups make bodybuilders’, and it certainly almost did in my case. I harboured a, thankfully, short-term dream of pushing (punishing) my body to its’ absolute limits and stepping on a stage lathered with fake tan to present my ‘shredded’ physique to a panel of judges in the hope that they might place me above the other physiques that would be ‘flexing’ their muscles beside me.
Upon my process of self-inquiry through my journaling practice that ran alongside my training routine, I learnt that each ‘set’, and ‘repetition’ was my attempt to build a shell to protect the fragility of my core and prove my own strength to myself and the world. I also learnt that it was, in fact, my own psychological transformation and the process of telling its’ story through the documentation of my physique transformation with photographs, that I was enjoying more than the achievement of the physique itself. I posted my two-year creative project to an Instagram page and, through the process, I learnt about the importance of consistency and discipline. Every lift was a ‘rep’. Every social media post was a ‘rep’.
After two hard years of grafting away beneath the bars, grinding out rep after painful rep, in the darkness of my local gym, six days per week, two hours per day, my motivation began to wane. I learnt that most, if not all, of the top bodybuilders in the world were regularly injecting themselves with steroids, and that was a slope that I was not willing to step onto. Thankfully, I took a spontaneous walk outdoors one afternoon and impulsively picked up my sisters’ digital camera that was glistening on her shelf in the sunlight as I walked past her room. My focus shifted swiftly to the natural world, although one eye remained fixed upon myself as I began to interact with Nature in a way that I hadn’t before.
I first stepped out into the world of Nature very much a boy in my psyche. Although Nature had always been a part of my life in some way, I never truly understood it or appreciated it throughout my younger years. Only through a period of self-study over the past few years have I begun to understand the importance of Nature, and the role that it plays in the development of the human being on a spiritual and psychological level.
In an essay, titled, ‘Learning to See Again’, that I produced for On Landscape magazine recently, I wrote the following: ‘A journey into the natural world offers great sanctuary and refuge, a place for stillness and deep reflection. When a man finds himself wandering alone on the clifftops that have been delicately shaped over millennia by the seas’ persistent chisel, what else has he to do but look back upon his own life to understand and make peace with the raging tides that carved the caves and crevasses within his own internal landscape?
Such a process of introspection can lead to immeasurable inner transformation. In my own case, the camera has been a tool for deep self-study, and I have been unable to avoid noticing the significant increase in awareness and presence within my own being since I began this practice; something that has greatly benefitted the relationships that I nurture with people around me. I move much more slowly and intently through life now, having ventured outdoors in search of the soul of Nature, and I am able to perceive much more within my own surroundings daily.’
Nature has been the portal through which I’ve entered to access greater levels of self-awareness, reach new depths of my soul, and expand my consciousness. The camera itself has been a vehicle that has transported me through time and space, back to revisit old versions of myself and forward to meet many new sides, too. Perhaps it is, that through this creative practice, I have been creating myself as well as the photographs themselves. It is through this art that I have learnt to safely express some of the deepest and most vulnerable parts of myself, rebuilding my trust with the world following some turbulent formative years that encouraged the repression rather than the expression of my deepest and truest Self.
I am learning, through this beautiful process of creativity, what it means to be a human being - one that is living to its’ fullest potential. Having been a man that followed the path of the masses, unknowing of where I wanted to walk, it brings me the deepest level of fulfilment to be out in the world with reclaimed sovereignty - walking a path that’s my own, writing a story of my own, all forming from the lived experiences of my own.
With each new adventure and peek through the lens of my camera; an evolution of the aforementioned ‘sets’ and ‘reps’, I am given an opportunity to create new stories and add pieces to the great jigsaw puzzle that is myself. Sometimes a click of the cameras’ shutter gives me an opportunity to express something and leave parts of myself behind. It is through this process that I become the highest version of myself, and I step into my greatest power as a human being - that of the conscious creator.
My potential and capacity for growth in the world of bodybuilding was limited, but, in the world of Nature and creativity; in the world of spirit, I have learnt that there are no limitations for what can be achieved. We are, like Mother Nature herself, boundless and infinite. It is through the unknown and unseen world of spirit, that these two practices are threads from the same twine.