am i or aren’t i?

Just recently Fab.com sent out a little customer survey wherein they asked us all kinds of questions about design and flash sale shopping and such in exchange for a bit of credit to their site. I love shopping there, so giving a moment of my time to take the survey seemed worth my while if it meant that they might tailor my shopping experience a little more for me as a result. Plus, I love shop credit!

Okay, I totally digress.

The point is: one of the very last questions on the survey completely caught me off guard and nearly paralyzed me for an answer. I stared at it for a long time, so unsure of what my answer should be that I almost abandoned my survey efforts altogether. The question?

Are you an artist?

I cannot tell you how many times I have asked myself this same question – only not pointedly because, obviously the question makes me very uncomfortable. Um, I like to sew and decorate and take pictures and write, but they’re all just hobbies. I also love to fiddle with photoshop and hot glue guns and wall colors, but again, I’m pretty sure that doesn’t make me an artist. Does it?

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About six months ago Ryan forwarded an email to me that he’d received from David Bean – one of the coolest, most successful  advertising/lifestyle/celebrity/musician photographers in Nashville – maybe the country. Y’all, HE is an artist! (Go ahead, take a peek at all his cool work, you know you want to!) The email from David was announcing a pay-what-you-want photography workshop to be held this winter (last weekend, actually) to benefit the Got Your Back Movement, which provides uniforms (and thus, the ability to attend school) to children in developing countries. It was an invitation to spread the word and/or attend the workshop. Ry thought I should go.

Well, yeah! I had definitely heard of David and although I knew I’d have a whole pile of insecurities to get over in order to actually show my face at this workshop, I would give anything to get to be there and learn from him and see him in action. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

So, yes! I signed up. I paid what I wanted, put it on my calendar and tried not to think about it for fear  I’d chicken out.

Fastforward to last weekend. It’s a cold Saturday morning and I’m weaving my way through Nashville, getting lost and actually showing up fifteen minutes late to this huge opportunity, freaking out that I’m going to offend my teacher as I slip into the back of his {gorgeous!} studio while he’s already started speaking.

Good thing is: he didn’t notice me. Better things is: few people did. Oh, what a relief. I was in a room full of photographers – if they didn’t have a thriving business of their own, there were talented students and well on their way. Some people traveled eight hours by car to be there. I traveled 40 minutes and still couldn’t seem to make it there on time. Y’all, I was beyond intimidated.

As David talked I watched in the corner of my eye a make-up artist carefully preparing a {gorgeous!} model for our morning photo shoot. I was already sweating – is he going to ask us to shoot in front of the class? Will we have to show our work? Is it lame to take notes? Lame to not take notes? Was I taking too many notes? So, so nervy.

After a couple of hours of super interesting and helpful instruction (the lighting stuff he taught us was so cool – and yes, I ended up taking lots of notes!), we 25 students made our way across the studio where his assistants had been setting up a shoot for us.

It was all so neat and interesting – I couldn’t resist sneaking a few photos with my phone.

I wanted to take pictures with my real camera, but I was nervy and didn’t know the rules and didn’t want to be the only one shooting.

When everything was finally set up and instructions had been given, other students began taking out their cameras and fiddling and shooting. Shooting the model felt like the obvious (and probably smart) shot, but I was so much more interested in how it was all happening.

As David shot, images were being instantly fed to his computer and to all of our phones and ipads with a program called CaptureOne. It was neat to see how the shots were coming through and he was demonstrating right and wrong ways to shoot people with instant examples. Really neat.

I let all the most aggressive folks do their thing while I hung back and soaked it all in. (Does this make me sound like a total fraidy-cat? If this were the survival of the fittest I would be failing big time.)

I finally worked up the guts to step up and take my shot. We were each allowed 20 seconds with the model.

I love what I got.

When I got home that night Ryan was anxious to hear all about it and see what I did. I dumped my SD card onto my laptop and I’m pretty sure he laughed as the photos came up. 90% of my shots were of what was taking place around the subject instead of the subject itself (or herself). He laughed because I am a documenter – I shoot life as it happens and not life as it’s set up to look awesome. Yes, I sometimes make adjustments in my everyday shooting to catch favorable light or to clear distractions from a shot. But he was right – it’s where I’m comfortable. And – he pointed out – it’s what I’m really good at.

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And if you’re dying to know what answer I finally settled on for that silly little survey: yes. I answered yes.

I am an artist! I see beauty where no one else sees it, I create beauty so others can enjoy it – it’s like David Bean told us that day at the workshop:

“We are created,
by a Creator
In His image.
Thus, we are all creative”

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