Matthew 7:3
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Mote | (c)M.M.Hewitt 2015 Downloading of this image is for any use strictly prohibited without written permission.
Ugh. I have to be honest, this is probably my least favorite picture I've done. I had high hopes for this image and it just never amounted to what I wanted. I struggled all evening about whether or not I was going to even share it and I decided I should. I feel as artists it's important to share our failures as much as our success. Because not everything we create is gold.
This is the image I took on our drive back from Moses Lake. It was foggy out again. I had originally started this image as a composite of a girl imposed into a background I created from another shoot. That attempt was a complete failure. I took the opportunity on our drive home to reshoot the image in some of the most beautiful fog I have seen yet. I was excited and was sure the image would work out this time. I mean I had gotten all of my elements but one in the same light and location. It should work. Ugh.
While everything I shot on location looked exactly as I wanted I could not get the most important element of this image to work how I wanted in order to convey the idea I had behind this scripture: the eye. I had received a set of macro lens filters for my birthday, something I knew I would need if I was going to have any shot of pulling this image off. I would need a crisp up close shot of an iris. I would need the stark definition of the fibers in the iris. The idea was to make it look like the iris was a permanent part of the landscape, that it had been there forever and always. I had attempted to make it look like the shadows in the iris fibers were crevasses in the ground by blending the snow into the iris color. Like a sink hole or a canyon of sorts. But still also keep it to where you could obviously tell that it was an eye. But alas I just couldn't get it to look how I envisioned or wanted. So what I have shown before you is my "this is as good as I could get it" version.
We are always encouraged to give it our best, our all, and sometimes we construe that to "be perfect." Perfection can be such a dangerous thing, causing us to lose ourselves in actions that degrade our character or soul all for the sake of being or creating something that is flawless. It's just not possible. Sometimes what we come up with and what we have to be okay with is our "this is as good as I could get it." And there is nothing wrong with that. We of course should always try our best in whatever our endeavor, but if we should fall short of our "perfect" mark it is just as remarkable how far we did get as it would have been had we made it to perfection. What is important is the effort and the lessons learned.
So while this is my least favorite I have done so far, the more I look at it the more proud I am of my effort to try something I've never done before. I've learned that I don't enjoy creating an image where the elements were not all there at the initial shoot. I'm not great at implementing elements that were obviously not there on location. But I tried. I've learned was does and doesn't work for me and I know where to go from here if I should ever attempt something like this again. I missed perfection but I achieved a pretty darn good journey.