PRONOTPRO #18
I'm not sure whether this post is about my creative practice, my desire to pump out more photographs, more portraits, more work. Or if it's about my weird body-makeup as a cyclist. It's likely both, since I shot this self portrait to illustrate my 'Lung-Gut' as I call it, but also to just make some photographs.
My Lung-Gut is probably my most self-conscious attribute as a cyclist in a sport obsessed with power to weight. I go back and forth between pointing out the shortcomings of being a 180-185 lb cyclist when the road points up, to winning hill climbs in spite of that. My weirdly protruding stomach is largely related to the size of my lungs, pushing out below my ribcage. These protruding lungs pushing and pulling large volumes of air are the reason I can pump out watts when cycling, it doesn't mean though, that I don't feel funny about it sometimes.
My creative practice is currently squeezed between my commitments to work and my commitments to cycling. Angela knows how I feel that I need to be making more, putting myself out there, showing up, doing the work. Much like cycling, a large part of winning a race is just doing the work of training, then showing up to the race, sometimes you just need to keep showing up to get it done. And that's where this mini-portrait-project came from. Well, its sortof where it came from.
You see, last Thursday Angela sent me an Instagram DM with a link to a post from artist-illustrator-designer Lisa Congdon. Angela sent me this because she knows I'm constantly asking myself (and her) how I can keep making things all the time, how I can do more, do better.
I know how I can keep making things all the time. It's just the act of doing the things. The real trick is making things and putting it out there (showing up). The little micro-blogs (Today #xx) have been about just that. It's about making a thing, ANYTHING and putting it out there. I'm trying to make a little (photograph) thing every 'today' but without putting too much pressure on myself. It's the freedom to put up photographs that aren't always great, but it's about the process of actually doing things.
Even in this new daily(ish) project I have already started asking myself how I can do it better. I've been looking at which Micro-4/3 camera to get (replacing one I dropped a few months ago), so I can keep a quality camera and lens with me, so I can make quality things quickly.
So, anyways, I made this self-portrait of a bike racer. While I'm hoping I can keep making small projects on the daily, I need to make efforts to shoot more portraits in more ways to keep developing my creative practice. It's not really a practice, without well, practice.