Creativity is a fickle beast.
This photo is one of many I took in Monument Valley last March. And many of those have appeared in the Daily Dose during the short few months I’ve been putting it on. Aye, it was a trip of great creative significance.
Like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters, it marked a convergence of great creative forces. I joined my friend Chris Henry for the trip, whom I had never met in person. I think we fed off each other, pushed each other to look at the landscape (and our cameras) in new ways.
In fact, without him this image would not exist. He drove the car through the shot after I framed up Agathla Peak and opened up the shutter for a long exposure. Like catching lightning in a bottle, we nailed it first try, just one take.
Of course, the creative significance of that trip went beyond the two of us traveling and photographing together. Weather conditions and celestial alignments came into play as we hoped to capture (and successfully so) the “Mitten Shadow” phenomena that only happens a couple evenings each spring and fall.
Beyond the need for sunlight to cast said shadow, we were privy to gusty winds blowing dust — miserable in some ways, but it made for dramatic imagery. And dramatic too was the sunrise we witnessed the first morning, the most memorable sunrise I’ve enjoyed as a landscape photographer.
Looking back it seems like my creativity flowed endlessly for those few days, like I turned on a faucet and just left it running.
But, the creative faucet can’t run forever — and that’s where I find myself now, at least as phototaking goes. I turn it on for a bit every night when I write the Daily Dose, but that’s with my butt comfortably plopped down somewhere (currently, in my bed, ha).
As I’ve been one to say, however, you can’t take great landscape photos sitting on the couch — at least not where my couch is located. So for what it takes to get said great photos, the handle for the hot water remains out of reach as I’m pulled back by all of life’s responsibilities and complications.
Right now I instead use photography in one of its most important functions, looking back on good memories. I can relish in that long, hot bath of creativity of yesteryear, knowing one of these days the streams will cross again and I will take another plunge into the creative significance.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading my ramble. Happy Monday.
-Jake
Sign up to get the Daily Dose of the Southwest delivered directly to your email inbox every weekday.
Awesome photo and insightful narrative!