Now you are wondering why I am posting a photo of a surfer when I am writing a photography blog that is now talking about running. Well stick with me with my roundabout feminine logic.
Life has a rhythm doesn’t it. Days have a rhythm. Days of the week being different to the weekend. Days spent on holiday develop a new sweet rhythm all of their own. My days have a rhythm to them. I always start my day with yoga. If I have to I will get up before sunrise to fit this in. It’s how I roll. Just very occasionally if I am shooting early, say at sunrise, I might give this a miss. I start with a cup of green tea (yep, I really like that stuff) and then put on my headphones and spend an hour on my mat easing my body into the day. I then spend the rest of the day either shooting, editing, uploading to Getty or doing all that other boring stuff that photographers have to do. For those of you reading this that think photographers spend their entire days behind the camera think again. Many many hours are spent at our computers doing all the gloriously mundane behind the scenes work which actually makes up the bulk of our lives unless of course you are so successful you have a team of assistants doing all the mundane stuff for you. Sadly I am not one of them.
Now thankfully my work is quite portable and I will often take my office to a coffee shop and work there just because I can and because I love coffee as much as I love green tea. Somewhere around mid afternoon I start to get restless and that beautiful afternoon light starts calling me. This is my favourite time to shoot if I am working on location outdoors but this is also my favourite time to run.
Once again I grab those headphones and head down to the beach. I am blessed to be able to call this hot and humid part of Africa home. There is a long promenade at my local beach which is almost exactly 5km long. I park at one end as I get out of the car and can actually feel a skip in my heart. I simply love the freedom of running. The way that for that time I belong only to myself. I love the place that I go in my mind and how time stops. That I forget everything and exist only in the moment. That I find the rhythm of my soul. Same thing happens when I get behind my camera. Same skip of the heart. Same place I go in my head and that same beautiful feeling of my soul finding its rhythm.
Now if you are not getting any of the above when you have your camera in hand you need to go do something else because when you are in your creative zone this is how it should be. If the world doesn’t stop for you when you create don’t give up your day job just yet. When you are truly passionate about your art it should make your soul sing, and your heart dance. It should make you feel weightless and it should make you feel free.
When I run the promenade I watch the surfers. I see the looks on their faces in those moments before they enter the ocean. I literally see the freedom they feel as they catch a wave. I know where they are. I know that their hearts are skipping beats and dancing their own secret dances. I feel their joy and I know that their souls are finding their rhythm.
Now go and find your sweet spot. Find the rhythm of your soul because when you do it’s an exquisitely beautiful thing.
nikivanvelden 