Dear Friends,
Happy Sunday everyone! I hope this message finds you doing well and having a relaxing, creative weekend. I am happy to share issue 2 of the newsletter with you today. Please enjoy and have a wonderful week.
Warm regards, Jeff
☑️ The Boredom Table
Recently, I have been interested in exploring the importance of boredom in my creative practice. Earlier this week, I woke up very early for no particular reason. Sitting at this table quietly in my basement, I had a rush of ideas and questions regarding boredom. Why do we experience boredom? Is it helpful or instructive in some way? Should we encourage periods of boredom to promote self-reflection and sensory respite?
So, I am going to experiment with planned boredom over the next several weeks at my basement table (now called “the boredom table”). I have a few hypotheses that I want to test in these planned boredom sessions. I will report my findings in future issues of the newsletter.
Hypotheses:
Boredom promotes creative problem-solving
Boredom not caffeine is a treatment for tiredness due to sensory overload
Boredom surfaces and consolidates my creative thoughts
Boredom can be enjoyable with appropriate perspective.
Some online resources I found interesting about the topic of boredom:
Your next big idea could come from — boredom by Aytekin Tank
The Quiet Power of Boredom in Your Life by Tim Denning
Why boredom is anything but boring by Maggie Koerth-Baker
The Art of Boredom — an Unrecognized Fount of Creativity by Grant Faulkner
☑️ Frozen Lake
Minnesota is a state with more than 11,000 lakes. In the winter months, our lakes freeze downward from the surface (more than 14 inches / 0.35 meters in some areas) as the temperatures plunge well below the freezing point for several months. Motor boats, jet skis, canoes, and swimmers are replaced by snowmobiles, sleds, and ice fishing houses. As a transplant to Minnesota, I am still getting used to the sight of people boldly driving cars and trucks across the frozen lakes. I am personally not so brave and tend to stay near the shoreline. As I continue to work on my 365 day photo project in 2022, I have identified one of the larger lakes in my area to be a prime location for photographs throughout the changing seasons this year. I am enjoying how the lake and adjacent park have a calm, frozen stillness when covered in snow.
Here are some photographs from the 4 visits I have made there in the last 6 weeks. I processed all of these moments in black and white to enhance the feeling of minimalism.
During my second visit to lake, I liked how the setting sun descended below the tree line at the horizon. Using a long exposure and intentional camera movement, I captured an abstract version of the frozen lake.
We had a snowstorm the day before my third visit to the lakefront. Most of the grounds were covered with undisturbed powdery snow. As seen above, I tried to focus my attention on trees and other items that emerged from the white landscape to create minimal frames. I made a few dozen photographs covering this subject matter. While I still like the concept, I don’t think I have found the right scene that brings the idea in my mind to life. That is okay with me as it means I get to try again on another snowy day.
On January 11th, we had a really colorful sunset - the sky was filled with blues, purples, oranges, and a bit of magenta. The man shown in the first photograph above stopped a good distance out on the lake to watch the sunset. He pulled a bucket from his sled and sat down with his legs extended facing the setting sun. He sat like that for a good 20 minutes — quiet, content, and without a smartphone in hand.
Two photographs taken in the first week of February — my last visit to the lake. The winter light and the long shadows were really amazing around 4:30 P.M. A shadow self-portrait was a fun bonus.
☑️ Inspirations
POPEL COUMOU
Popel Coumou is a remarkably innovative paper collage artist and photographer from the Netherlands. I first learned about her work via @popelcoumou on Instagram when Maarten Rots shared her beautiful art in his stories. Popel recently had an almost yearlong exhibition at the Fotomuseum Den Haag called “Paper and Light.” In this exhibition, her installed paper collages were backlit to create fascinating three dimensional scenes that successfully blur the lines between reality and abstraction. The museum produced a behind-the-scenes video about the installation of Popel’s works. Totally fascinating!! If you have time to look further into her work, a visit to her website (popelcoumou.nl) and a stop by series #16 is recommended.
RORY KENNEDY
Rory Kennedy is a talented artist and illustrator based in Glasgow, Scotland. I am a huge fan of Rory’s illustrations and enjoy how he uses color, lines, and perspective to infuse contrast into his art. His illustrations are reminiscent of street photography where harsh midday sun casts deep shadows throughout the scene. I have been following Rory @rorykennedy for a while on Instagram. Here are two posts from Rory’s instagram page (Baked and a behind-the-scenes of his process) to get started in learning more about his style. His website (rorykennedy.com) is worth a visit to see his full portfolio and to learn more about him.
☑️ Capturing Thoughts
SCENARIO: My thoughts are fleeting and easily forgotten. I want to capture them in a reliable system for later review.
CONSIDERATIONS: I rarely have a pen and paper readily available when interesting thoughts come to mind. I want to keep all of my thoughts in one place - not on individual scraps of paper. During my 40 minute drive to and from work, I need to capture my thoughts using my voice.
MY APPROACH: I capture my thoughts using a single Apple note on my iPhone. Using the Shortcuts app on my iPhone, I have established an automation that can be triggered by either saying “Hey Siri, Thoughts” or clicking the Thoughts icon on my home screen. In either case, the automation hears my spoken words and turns them into text within my “Thoughts” Apple note.
If you are interested in trying this shortcut, you will want to do the following:
Establish a new note in Apple notes and give it a title (“Thoughts”)
Open Shortcuts and build the automation workflow as shown here
I make a home screen icon using the app, WordSwag, for iPhone. Here, I decided to use an emoji instead of text. I searched my emoji library for “thoughts” and the thoughts balloon emoji was given as an option.
☑️ About Me
I am left-handed.
As a kid, I played shortstop for my school’s baseball team.
237 - the number of audiobooks in my collection.
☑️ Watched This Week
An Introverted Street Photographer by Ivan Chow (@ivunchow)
How I faked being a billionaire so you could see NYC’s best views by Andi Schmied | TEDxVienna
Typography tutorial - 10 rules to help you rule type by The Futur
☑️ Future Issues?
I have set up a google form to capture your suggestions. You can provide suggestions anonymously or enter your name in the appropriate field if you would like me to attribute the suggestion to you if I write about it in a future issue of the newsletter.
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