Weekly Grab
This is my weekly compilation of photos and prompts. If you’d like to see these delivered daily to your inbox when they’re first released, including some subscriber only exclusives, consider supporting my work with a Substack subscription (also complimentary, but donations welcome). Thanks for following my curiosity journey.
Stay curious, preferably with a camera in hand.
Individual
It’s interesting how our individuality becomes much more noticeable as our world gets smaller. It’s not hard to imagine how specific we can be if we’re serving an audience of one or just a few. We can customize our offering to a person instead of a group. And, this is a powerful and compelling approach to service and problem solving. The trouble of course, is it doesn’t scale well. Often, it isn’t practical to focus so closely and serve only one or two people. So, we develop systems and policies which allow us to handle more, in some cases many, many more. But this comes at the expense of overlooking the individual and their specific situation. What a pity, because this is where the real magic lies, and perhaps the reason we started our craft in the first place.
How can we make the world smaller, especially for the people around us and even more so for the one person standing in front of us? How do we see them as individuals and make them feel like the world revolves around them, at least for a little while?
Last Light
Time is fleeting.
One of the most basic, yet important questions we can ask ourselves…what are we going to do with it?
Point
If we’re going through the trouble to make one, it really helps to be specific. This requires some forethought, research and most of all, empathy. And after all of this investment of time, energy and affiliation, are we willing to change our mind? How connected are we to our point?
The point is there’s usually more than one.
Flow
There’s a lot which goes into a steady stream, free from interruption and disruption. It’s like a beautiful song or poem, they just seem to flow so effortlessly. Of course, it takes a tremendous amount of work, planning, design and a little luck for flow to work.
What’s holding up your flow? What part of your work or project could use some adjustment for things to go more smoothly?
Tension
We can use tension to our advantage to create desire and to spark action. Most marketing is centered around this idea, first creating tension about not having something or being left out in some way. And then, relieving this feeling with their offering. But, tension left unsolved can also work against us leaving us paralyzed with indecision and creating a myriad of other consequences including irritability, tunnel vision and a general lack of empathy and understanding. We focus so much on the cause of our stress, we’re blind to everything else.
Make sure tension is working for us and not against us. And, when it’s moving in the wrong direction, find some relief. How do you relieve your tension? Here’s one idea which might help.
Counted
Do you ever feel like you’re just a number? One in a series of sameness?
Fitting in is a choice. So is standing out. Choose wisely.
Shapes
What leads us to the shapes and patterns we put into the world? What do we want people to see?
What if they see what we don’t see?
Get the Camera Out 