This is the first in a three-part series of articles on discovering who you are and what you love. I’ve been thinking about my childhood lately, mining it for clues that resonate with what I do today. The themes will be process, curation, and adventure.
Focus on Process
On the Ice, my refuge
What did you love to do most as a child? For some this might be a hard question, but for me it’s easy. It was figure skating.
From the age of 5, I was obsessed. I wanted to be at the rink and on the ice any chance I could and this didn’t waver until about the age of 17.
While I went through many levels of skating tests, competed in competitions, and appeared in local shows, these were not my favourite parts of skating. As a matter of fact, in my mid-teens, I gave up competing because I just didn’t like it (and was never going to be a Canadian champion).
I just loved to skate. It was all about the feeling, not the result.
Today, many decades later, I don’t skate often but when I do I remember the feel of the ice and the air on my face. When I attend skating shows and the arena goes dark at the beginning and I hear the sounds of blades on the ice, there is a little flutter in my stomach.
It feels like home.
I still follow the elite levels of figure skating religiously. Watching the Olympics this year was an emotional roller coaster for me – “the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.”
We don’t have to be the best at something or have ribbons or medals to justify spending our time doing it.
Skating taught me so much about life – being in the moment, moving my body, the value of practice and persistence and expression.
When I took my first darkroom class in photography, I felt the same passion I felt for skating and that also has never wavered.
I don’t have to be the best photographer. I just know that I love doing it and that’s all that matters. Mentors (artists) like Freeman Patterson, Andre Gallant, Frederick Franck, and Thomas Merton taught me the value of seeing and being in photography and life.
While trying to sell my work online, I discovered that there are many others out there like me, who love the process of photography. And, that is why I teach how to see.
What do you love to do just for the sake of doing it?
Stay tuned for Part 2 – Curation
I find this idea of mining our childhoods very intriguing. I also liked to ice skate, but my first love was dancing, and I loved learning ballet, tap, jazz. I gave up my dream of being a professional dancer when I entered my teens, but I still love to dance. Now my main passion is photography, but I still find time to jump up and dance when i hear a good song.
Gina, Freeman Patterson talks about dancing with his camera. Perhaps that is what you’re doing now.
As I child, it was skating for me as well – but rolling skating rather than on ice. I went twice a week to the local rink, had a skating costume and my own skates. It is the only time in my life that I felt free in my body’s movement. In the few times that I have skated as an adult, all those good feelings came back.
I came late to photography and came to it kicking and screaming when it was a requirement of my graphics design coursework. Who knew it would become such a big part of my creative life today?
I loved being outside, camping with my family, and walking in the woods. And I loved taking pictures, learning from my grandfather, and processing film and photos in his dark room. Today when I have my camera along and walk in the woods, I know that I am touching back to my childhood and doing what I always loved to do.