Keep Creating. Stay bored.

I've been teaching my eight year old son to shoot film.

But why, though? Do I really want to set him up for financial ruin at such a young age? Do I really want to continue to provide film for him and drive half an hour to Douglasville a couple times per month to get his film developed and scanned? Is this going to add to the inevitable destruction of my bank account? (For those who don't know, it's expesive to buy, shoot, and process film these days!) Why not only shoot digital?

As he takes the roll of Kodak Gold I pulled out of the refrigerator for him and begins fumbling with his camera, I am filled with a sense of pride that I am sure any other parent has expereinced at one time or another. He somehow looks like a natural, and completely clueless at the same time. He's using an old Minolta point-and-shoot that belonged to my in-laws, so he hasn't exactly learned to manually adjust his settings like aperture and shutter speed yet. His fascination largely revolves around inserting the film and taking it out when its done. He thinks its cool how this little plastic canister with "tape" in it becomes the images that he envisioned in his head. There is something about the physical process that is satisfying, too. We often compare it to vinyl records. Sure, we can easily stream Pinegrove (one of his favorites) from my phone to the bluetooth speaker, but there is something about taking the the copy of Marigold out of the sleeve, placing it on the turntable, and gently setting the needle in place that adds to the overall experience.

I keep thinking about how its more important than ever to not lose that sense of wonder. Sometimes I feel like I am losing it, if I haven't already thanks to my cynical and nihlistic tendencies (which I am, in fact, working on!), but I'd like to do everything I can to make sure that my kids don't lose it just yet. I want them to continue to see that there actually is beauty to behold in the world around them, even in the midst of the constant barrage of horrific headlines and senseless tragedies. I want them to be curious about both the good and the bad that this world has to offer. In an age where data centers are draining our natural resources in order to do our thinking for us, I want to see them maintain the ability to figure things out for themsleves. I want them to not expect instant gratification. I want them to understand that the world is full of complex issues that don't have simple solutions. I want them using their imaginations. I want them to be bored. I want them to keep creating.

Creating requires you to be thoughtful, and I think that most of all I want my kids to see the world with thoughful eyes and hear it with thoughtful ears. I want them to use thoughful words and imagine thoughtful ideas. I'm sure you've noticed by now, but there are a lot of loud voices out there that are clogging up the airwaves with dehumanizing rhetoric, short-sighted and self-serving ideology, and thoughtless solutions to problems that barely seem to exist, if they even do at all. Our country's treamment of immigrants, legal or not, is a relevant example. We've never been great at handling this issue, but it seems even more ghoulish and in-your-face over the last few months than ever before. I'm really not going out of my way to make this newsletter political, but issues like this one actually do shape the work that I do to some degree and also motivate me to raise children who might be able to realize better solutions to these complex issues by ensuring human digity remains at the forefront of their thinking.

Will my kids ever be in a position to address things like immigration, affordable housing, the climate crisis or healthcare costs? What about taxes, or the way that resources are allocated in general? Will they rethink the way we handle policing? Will they be able to ensure we have funding for innovation while maintaining existing critical infrastructure? Will they make education better or fianlly build a high speed rail system in this country? Could my five year old daughter become our first female president? Who knows! But I do think we need creative and thoughtful voices to be as loud as possible, and I feel that my activism is most productive when it is centered around shaping this tiny sliver of the future of which I am still able to have a significant impact.

Am I reaching a bit here? Maybe. Is there really a link between creativity and thoughtfulness? Isn't it obvious? What does solving the healthcare crisis have to do with teaching my kid to shoot film?

I dont know, man. I am mostly just thinking out loud here.

But what I do know is that Hank has learned that he has to be thoughtful whenever he is shooting film. He only has so many frames, and he is learning not to waste them. (Best of luck to him on that!) You have to try. You have to fail. You have to learn. You have to think about your subject, your surroundings, and so many different variables all at once. Sometimes the lighting is bad and there may not be a simple solution. Sometimes something breaks and you have to find a workaround. Maybe your subject is boring. You have to think and be creative, and for now he's excited about creating, even without the satisfaction of instant results. If nothing else, maybe this is an excercise that will be valuable in other areas of his life. Maybe its not actually about film photography at all, but rather a tool to help shape a broader worldview.

I'm trying to do better about regaining that aforementioned sense of wonder in my own life, too. Maybe I don't actually have all of the answers, so why should I act as if I am truly certain about anything? When it comes to my photography work, I have the privillege of documenting so many major life events for so many different people, and that fact should never be lost on me. Sure, I could snap all of the staple wedding shots and take the money and run, but I owe it to both myself and my clients to be better than that. I owe it to myself to be creative, make art, take risks, and embrace the complexities that come with everyone's unique set of circumstances. I owe it to myself to listen and to learn from each and every one of them.

I hope I am making sense to you. The intersection of creativity and thoughtfulness makes sense in my head, I think, and my hope is that as these ideas merge we will have a renewed clarity when it comes to how we experience the world around us. Can film photography do this for us? Sure, but I suppose digital can too. Maybe there are many ways we can realize this, but photography is the tool that I am using right now, and its one of the ways I am trying to instill these values into myself and my children.

Maybe you don't consider yourself an artist, but I'd encourage you to create something anyways, and be thoughtful while you do it. Write the poem. Bake a cake. Paint the picture. Start the newsletter, even if you have no clue what you're doing. (Me!) Make the photo. Make the sculpture. Go sit on a park bench and observe the world around you. Listen to someone who sees things differently than you do. Build a table. Write the song, even if it sucks. Dance or something. (I'm not doing this one.) Plant some flowers. Take the risk. Use your imagination. Get bored. Just go through the process and come out better than you were before.

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but keep creating. The world needs it! Maybe the price of film is worth it after all.