I struggled a bit when I started work on editing the Jujuy images. I often find the start of some new work to be the most precarious part of the process. If I start on the wrong tack, I can head off in the wrong direction. Which is why I do a few things:
give myself permission to change the work at any given time.
edit a few images in the set to see what the overall ‘tone’ or ‘mood’ is. This may instruct that I go back to point 1 with images I edited at the very beginning.
Edit Mk1
Edit Mk2
Before I left for my Norway trip, I had a go at editing this image of Salinas Grandes salt flat in Argentina. The left-hand image is the original. I found I couldn’t settle into where I should go with it. The hue changed a lot during the Mk1 edit, and I settled for the water in the trench being the same as the sky colour. But I felt troubled by the dark horizon. It was far too dominant for me. Which leads me to my third point:
3. If something isn’t feeling right: it isn’t right.
I just didn’t feel right about this edit. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and so I decided to shelve it until I had completed more images from the set. You’ll note from my post from yesterday that I settled on a darker / more saturated feel to the work, and once I had done that, going back to re-edit the image above became much clearer which way I should go about it.
This leads me to my point today: sometimes the answer takes time to arrive at and perhaps more importantly, that accepting that everything is in a state of flux and could easily change is freeing. If you are the kind of person who needs to know now, or likes to regiment their life, then working on art may be extremely frustrating. If you can live with knowing that you may not know the answer to any artistic issues you have, then you’ll do a lot better.
Our biggest limitation is: ourselves. We are often the stumbling block in our own creativity.
I often get in my way.
I find that when I am uncertain of which route to take, it’s best to shelve it and go and work on something else. The answer will come in its own way when the time is right.