dream-scapes.

Perhaps it's because my dreams have been so vivid lately. Or perhaps it's because I feel like I just woke up and things around me are oddly in focus yet fuzzy, definition slipping away at the edges. Either way, I’ve been drawn to images lately with a dream-like quality. Due to the fact that I’ve been a dream machine I can say with some certainty that there are aesthetic elements of dreams that I could curl up in and lay for hours. First of all, the details of specific scenes or people are incredibly vivid while things before and after blur together like drops of food coloring in water. Why these scenes? Why these details? If they pass through my mind just before I wake up, I find myself thinking about them for hours. The location of the dreams are equally interesting. The backdrops range from the mundane to the completely personal. In the end, while I want to question the significance of every flicker I can remember, I can’t say that I’ve found a message in this nightly parade of my subconscious. For now I’ll enjoy the show and continue to allow it to influence my photography.    

The images above were taken this past weekend while on a dog walk. The clouds were just so puffy and the sky intensely blue. I was drawn to the contrast between sky and the dull landscape--just barely awake this spring. I also couldn’t resist the Mr.Rogers-esque scene looking over Missoula.

waking up from hibernation.

I feel like I went to sleep around the first of the year and am only just waking up; my creativity was frozen, my mind numb and my cameras packed away. I'm not sure I've ever experienced a period quite like that before in my creative process. I've absolutely experienced the the natural ups and downs that go hand and hand with art. Even in the times that I've produced the least, the wheels have been turning and I would stock pile ideas until I was ready to try them out. Not these past two months--there was nothing. I realized one day that even my daily dog walks weren't producing the kind of mental photographs they used to. My mind was a vast waste land of artistic thought. I was asleep.

If I had gone through this period of time without any explanation I might have panicked. The truth is, I was relatively comfortable about the whole thing. While my brain was off my body was on. Thus my road to parenting began. I knew that I would be tired and possibly sick but really I had no idea the overwhelming effect it would have on every part of me. Yes I knew there was all sorts of growth and hormones and a general getting to know you period starting immediately. But did the ever growing bundle of cells that would eventually form bones and eyes and swim for months on end in my belly really need my brain? Apparently.

So here I am, two plus months later and I feel my mind yawing, stretching and looking around. It looks a little different out there these days, even after such a short period of time. I wonder if when a bear walks out of it's cave for the first time it sees the world in a different light? I still have months until my life changes in ways I've never considered. Today, however, I sense the shift. It all looks the same, yet different, even now.