POST WORKSHOP RE-ENTRY BLUES

Re-entry into ‘ordinary life’ can be difficult after a deeply personal experience, such as a photo workshop based on creativity, community and artistic/emotional vulnerability rather than apps and camera equipment. If your workshop also included travel outside of your own culture re-entry can be even more intense. You have changed yet the world around you back home has not. You want to share your new growth but others may want you to stay the same.

Here are some ways to continue to live your art:

• Find or start a support network of like-minded photographers or artists
• Avoid groups more interested in cameras and equipment than in artistic self-expression
• Be very careful whom you take criticism from! Consider the source…
• Explore your own motives for who you want to share your work with and why
• Nurture artist and artist-friendly friendships, especially from other disciplines
• Find a mentor. If possible, meet with them often at regularly scheduled intervals
• Start an ideas or creativity journal. Write about your process, progress and struggles
• Take yourself on an ‘artist’s date’ (see Julia Cameron/The Artist’s Way)
• Visit local galleries and museums. Look at paintings, sculpture and other art forms
• Visit your local public library and look at art and photo books
• Notice how work you admire uses composition and space
• Read a book from the ‘Recommended Media List’
• Re-read the book Art and Fear by Bayles and Orland
• Google the work of photographers listed on the ‘Recommended Media List’
• Use ‘Shots’ magazine or upcoming submission themes as your next assignment
• Selectively submit your photos to photo contests, gallery and publication calls for entry
• Plan photo outings with specific predetermined themes
• Give yourself specific assignments with a deadline for completion
• Try using the Vision Quest Photo Assignment Cards for new photo assignments
• Mine your previous work for themes, then turn those themes into projects or exhibits
• Have a timetable and deadline for those assignments or projects
• Set up a group exhibit, with a theme, for your artists group
• Secure an exhibit of your own work. Deadlines can be amazing creativity energizers!
• Set up an exhibit with members of your workshop
• Post your photos for comments and sharing on Vision Quest’s Facebook page
• Join an existing Flicker or photo-sharing group. Post photos on Instagram
• Start a photo-sharing group with members of your workshop
• Don’t get too caught up in social media platforms- they can also suck energy out of you!
• Publish a Blurb, Shutterfly or Apple book of your workshop photos and experience
• Re-visit and re-work workshop assignments
• Re-visit the writing exercises from class
• Have something to look forward to: plan your next trip or sign up for a future workshop!

©Douglas Beasley 2017