Lessons of a 3 Week Internet Fast

Look | Sensory Inspiration

Throughout the ages individuals have fasted from food as a spiritual practice of purifying body and mind.

Julia Cameron in her 1992 book, The Artist's Way (A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity), suggests a week of reading deprivation to "jump start" your creative process.

Well, aside from one day when I was teaching, I spent the last 3 weeks of August offline.  I loved it.  I read more books.  I wrote postcards.  I used the dictionary and phone book. Stress about number of hits, likes, tweets, etc. evaporated.  I only took vacation photos.  All in all, a welcome break from my normal routine.  I did not want to go back online.

 Townhouse Neighborhood

As my internet fast neared conclusion,  I became concerned about what I would photograph once I got back into the swing of things.  The world around me seemed bland.  I was not living up to this statement from my About page: "The ultimate satisfaction from a lifetime of creating art and finding inspiration is the awareness that everything around me is art and has inherent value."

I was not seeing art everywhere.  WHAT AM I GOING TO PHOTOGRAPH? I dreamed one night that I was camera-less in a chaotic city, thinking to myself:  "I need my camera to make sense of this place."

Last Saturday in Brattleboro, Vermont I dropped off a print of Townhouse Neighborhood as a donation to the Insight Photography Project's annual print auction fundraiser.  Afterword, I wandered into the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center.  Photographs!  Sculpture!  Video!  Installations!  Constructions!

I left the museum, my creative well of inspiration filled, seeing photographs everywhere.  I returned the next morning with a camera:

Retaining Wall Art

Self-Portrait at the Museum Door

Ode to Kertesz

Chain Link Fence

This process of shifting from feeling creatively empty to visually full, from seeing my world as uninteresting to delighting in life, is the essence of Create Look Enjoy.

And, after a rough transition, I am back online, with a more relaxed perspective.


Tech Tips: Nikon D700,  ISO range 100-400.  Townhouse Neighborhood and Ode to Kertesz are in-camera multiple exposures.  With Chain Link Fence I shot at f22 at a 1/10 of a second while moving my camera.  © 2010 John Nordell

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