Postcards from the Creative Journey

539 On The End Of A Project - (Part II)

Please don’t get me wrong about finishing projects. Projects do have to end. The tough part is to be able to recognize a stopping point for what you have just completed and recognizing the actual completion of some work. One of my favorite movies is Tom Hanks’ “That Thing You Do,” a fictional account of a one hit wonder band in the early 1960’s. People asked for sequel, but Hanks said the movie about a one hit wonder band should not have a sequel. It was completed, finished and ended right there.

Knowing when to stop is definitely a judgement call. You have to bring that project to some form of completion whether it is just a stopping point or you just know that the project is done for good. This is important because you must complete a project by tying up the loose ends and bringing the project to some form of conclusion. Sometimes we pick projects that start with great promise and fail to meet the initial expectations of success. Even if the project is a complete failure you don’t give up on the project. Complete the project. You can learn a lot from a failure. The most important thing you can learn is that projects have endings and reaching a project end in itself is a worthy goal.

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Basketball is important in North Carolina. The Cary High School Women's Basketball team from 1917 was included in the school yearbook. The High School athletic field is now a parking lot, but the Jones Cottage, seen in the background of both historic and contemporary photographs is still standing. The cottage is one of my favorite structures in Cary. I have photographed it as long as I have been living in Cary. It is the subject of my folio Victorian Lady. 

Photo Safari XXXII* Day 1, Transitions

Day 1 was a day of transitions. From southeast to northwest (a couple of thousand miles) and in elevation (more than a couple of thousand feet). Don’t forget the time zone transition, from East Coast to West Coast. I probably should mention humidity, too. In Eastern Oregon humidity is a rare thing, unlike the Carolinas where it is a way of life.

The big thing that impressed me yesterday was the transition to autumn. Summer weather is still in full force back home (hurricanes included) and on the trip from Portland to Madras, Oregon the leaves have begun to change color and the weather is decidedly cooler.

Some Autumn color from the east side of Mount Hood.

The trip to Madras was not without photography, but there are some technical issues I have to solve (buy a card reader with the right cable connection for my chromebook) before I can upload some pictures to the blog. (Brooks had a cable with the proper plugs and we directly loaded from the camera to the computer.) The important thing for yesterday is we did begin to make photographs the “ice has been broken” and we will soon be in full blown Photo Safari mode.

 

We were hoping for some clouds on the drive to Madras and were almost excited, but they weren't clouds, it was a grass fire. 

*Photo Safaris are enumerated with Roman Numerals because only things of great significance are given Roman Numerals. Things like World Wars, Popes and movies by Sylvester Stallone.

538 On The End Of A Project - (Part I)

We all know projects are temporary and have endings. But sometimes, the projects themselves don’t understand that and what started out as a project just doesn’t want to end. I used to think this was bad and fought the projects to make them end. But then I started thinking about non-photographic artistic projects.

Let’s look at writers and movie makers. Writers have characters that move through multiple books. James Bond, Jack Reacher, Harry Bosch and many other literary characters appear in sequential books. Books are complete works of art, but these characters survive the book endings and go off on another adventure. Mulder and Scully have been investigating X Files for decades. These examples start as projects and when successful, they become franchises. This taught me an important lesson.

The lesson is projects do not have to end. If the project wants to continue, grab hold tight and hang on for the ride. Use the experience from these franchise projects in your other works. Maybe the franchise will help your other projects and the other projects can help your franchise.

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Well, projects may not want to end, but the After the Memories exhibit will be coming down later this week. This combination image is the Page Walker Arts and History Center, photographed in 1988 or so in black and white and in 2018 in color. The location of the exhibit is on the second floor between the two doors. The Page Walker suffered years of neglect before being rescued by a local conservation group. The restored building is an integral part of the cultural life of Cary, North Carolina.