Nathaniel Reinhart
Last December
It's weird for me to think that this picture was taken more than a year ago. I was looking back at my "To Post To Flickr" folder and this image struck me. Nothing in particular about this image - really this was just the warm up (see what I mean). I mean it's not a bad image itself, but when I think about that night, this isn't the image that comes to mind.
The image really struck me, because I took it just over a year ago and in looking at it, I have to ask myself - "Have I grown and progressed as an artist in the last year? Am I in the same place I was when I took this picture? Or have I grown?"
A good friend of mine is a videographer. Sometime in November he decided to film the last forty sunrises of the year. Today was day 22 out of 40. My friend lives in eastern Oregon - where, during this project, he has had to deal with shooting in temperatures as low as -9F. My understanding is that at -9F, the hand warmers keeping his camera warm lasted just long enough to keep his camera from shutting down before they froze.
My friend's dedication inspires me to push myself. So often, I get busy, apathetic or just plain lazy. When I think about the dedication it takes to get up every morning, feeling like it or not, no matter what the weather or sky looks like, to go out in the cold and get the shot - it's something that I wish I would/could do.
What does this have to do with progressing as an artist? When I took this picture, it was a whim. I was already in Zig Zag and about 45 minutes before sunset grabbed my camera and decided to see if Trillium Lake was still open. Literally a whim. I didn't take a tripod - because honestly at the time I didn't really care much for them. Not that I care for them now, but I have a healthy respect for them. Because of this - I ended up shooting at a much higher film speed than I really should have - which means that as beautiful as these images are, my laziness kept me from making an even better image.
I recently ran across the following story from the book "Art and Fear". In reading it, I realized how often I fall into the "quality" group and how much I need to be in the "quantity" group. I think that learning to be there is really what growing as an artist means for me. And I feel like I have grown, but not as much as I wish.
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
Last December
It's weird for me to think that this picture was taken more than a year ago. I was looking back at my "To Post To Flickr" folder and this image struck me. Nothing in particular about this image - really this was just the warm up (see what I mean). I mean it's not a bad image itself, but when I think about that night, this isn't the image that comes to mind.
The image really struck me, because I took it just over a year ago and in looking at it, I have to ask myself - "Have I grown and progressed as an artist in the last year? Am I in the same place I was when I took this picture? Or have I grown?"
A good friend of mine is a videographer. Sometime in November he decided to film the last forty sunrises of the year. Today was day 22 out of 40. My friend lives in eastern Oregon - where, during this project, he has had to deal with shooting in temperatures as low as -9F. My understanding is that at -9F, the hand warmers keeping his camera warm lasted just long enough to keep his camera from shutting down before they froze.
My friend's dedication inspires me to push myself. So often, I get busy, apathetic or just plain lazy. When I think about the dedication it takes to get up every morning, feeling like it or not, no matter what the weather or sky looks like, to go out in the cold and get the shot - it's something that I wish I would/could do.
What does this have to do with progressing as an artist? When I took this picture, it was a whim. I was already in Zig Zag and about 45 minutes before sunset grabbed my camera and decided to see if Trillium Lake was still open. Literally a whim. I didn't take a tripod - because honestly at the time I didn't really care much for them. Not that I care for them now, but I have a healthy respect for them. Because of this - I ended up shooting at a much higher film speed than I really should have - which means that as beautiful as these images are, my laziness kept me from making an even better image.
I recently ran across the following story from the book "Art and Fear". In reading it, I realized how often I fall into the "quality" group and how much I need to be in the "quantity" group. I think that learning to be there is really what growing as an artist means for me. And I feel like I have grown, but not as much as I wish.
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.