Curiosity

Curiosity may have killed the cat but it sparks endless creativity at my house. And that creativity leads to new inspiration, discoveries, ideas, stories, plans, excitement, and purpose. It pops up randomly, but if we are open-eyed in those moments, we can grab on and run with it. Yesterday was one of those days.

Curiosity

Wondering what I might like to photograph yesterday for my Project 31 image of the day, I picked up a camera from my desk and thought I’d look through whatever lens was on there and see what the world looked like. Sometimes a massive shift in visual perspective sparks a new idea. Feeling in the mood for abstract images, something along the lines of celebrating the intangibles of the season, I also grabbed a concave lens and a prism. My desk is near the Christmas tree so I turned in my chair to see what I could see through the camera and various optics pairings before setting off to shoot. The lens on that camera was a macro lens, set to focus on something only inches in front of the lens so of course the tree was wildly out of focus. BUT…the lights on the tree made giant, beautiful bokeh balls. And the concave lens and prism added shapes. I didn’t need to go anywhere, my images were right in front of me!

So I sat there and played. I got curious. What if I turn the prism this way? Angle everything that way? What if this? What if that? Free from judgment of quality – purely curious playtime.

Rich rewards and entirely new opportunities lie just beyond curiosity. The key is in sinking into the curiosity. If we don’t go see, try, and explore, how could we ever know what lies ahead for us? How could we ever see things differently?

Curiosity is Contagious

As I was playing, Mason saw and got inspired to join in so I set him up with a camera, prism, and lensball and he went off on his own path of curiosity and exploration.

Can you believe each image in this post is a photograph of our Christmas tree mid-afternoon? The shocks of blue, pink, and purple in my images and the nebula-like figure in his come courtesy of our borderline tacky color-changing star, a new addition this year from Bronners. When I bought it, I never thought it would add art to our lives in this way. Curiosity led us to find it.

Go Be Curious

I’m issuing a challenge to you to go be curious. With a camera but also with life. Where can you ride the wave of What If? What can you come to with a completely open mind and simply try? What inconceivable opportunities might arise? Throw off the blinders and rules and Shoulds and go be curious.

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