Periphery, Patience and Possibilities

If you know me, you know I love alliteration. And you might think these three words have nothing in common except their first letter. But you’d be wrong. These three words, it turns out, are the basis of my creative process. Oh—looky there. Another P word.

This story’s a little winding, but I promise it pairs well with a cup of coffee and it comes full circle.

Periphery

Remember NEOWISE? The Great Comet of 2020. In the middle of lockdowns and uncertainty and fear, the cosmos sent us a gift. A natural wonder in the night sky.

Of course, I wanted to photograph it. But I couldn’t see it! I could find the Big Dipper, though, so I pointed my camera in that direction and sure enough: voila! There it was.

NEOWISE, July 12, 2020

A few days later, I headed to Mono Lake with my friend Dana. We were part of a pandemic pod, and though it felt weird to leave the “safety” of our homes, our desire to photograph NEOWISE won out.

Night one? Clouded out. Gorgeous sunset, though.

Me taking a picture of Dana taking a picture of Mono Lake and the clouds that would obscure NEOWISE

Night two? More clouds in the northwest where the comet was supposed to be. So, we wandered the lakeshore, set up for Milky Way shots, and played around lighting the tufas with flashlights.

And then I saw it. Sort of.

Just a flicker at the edge of my vision. I turned to look but it was gone. As I turned back toward the Milky Way setup—there it was again. If I turned too fast or looked directly, it disappeared. But if I turned slowly, and tried to concentrate on my peripheral vision, I could see it. NEOWISE, hiding in the periphery.

Dana and I scrambled to pack our gear and head for a better angle on the lake shore. But when we turned a corner, we realized we were not alone. The shoreline was full of other comet hunters, so we turned off our lights and tried to navigate in the dark.

Big mistake. BIG mistake.

We started calling out like bats: “Anyone there?” “We can’t see you, but we know you’re there!” Voices answered from every direction. We fumbled along, crashing into rocks, each other, and nearly into someone’s tripod. We got wet. We got bruised. We laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe.

Eventually, someone asked, “All clear?” Voices all around us replied: “All clear!” Someone flipped on a flashlight and … oh what a relief! Still laughing because we realized how ridiculous we must have looked; we found a spot along the shore. Just us and fifty of our closest photographer friends.

From that spot, we still couldn’t see the comet directly. But we knew where to point our cameras because we figured out how to spot NEOWISE in our peripheral vision. Later I read that our central vision relies on color and light, while peripheral vision is better at detecting contrast—especially in low light. I couldn’t see NEOWISE straight on, but I could see it if I didn’t look at it. Makes perfect sense.

NEOWISE above Mono Lake, July 17, 2020

Writing inspires reflection. Good thinks. Sometimes even overthinking. But in retrospect, I realized that a lot of my creative process happens in the periphery.

Left Field

If you read The Space Between, you’ll know that the idea for that photo project started brewing while I was working on something else. I noticed something off to the side. Later, it resurfaced. That idea took hold while I wasn’t looking at it.

More recently, I’ve learned that creative sparks don’t appear right in front of me like a flashing neon sign. They drift in from the edges. From out in left field. They show up blurry and half-formed and hard to define. And if I look too hard, they vanish. I’m learning to trust that the vague ideas in my periphery will eventually develop (pun intended).

Patience

So when David DuChemin asked recently, “What stands in the way of you seeing more creatively?”—I had an answer.

Patience. And possibilities.

Patience is not my strong suit. When something catches my eye, I’ll take a few shots, look at the screen, and think, “Meh. Nothing here.” But I’m learning that usually, something is there. I just haven’t seen it the right way yet.

It’s like NEOWISE: I can’t look straight at it. I have to let it go. Walk away. Wait. Come back to it from another angle. It feels like working on a puzzle. I’ve got this piece—but it doesn’t make sense until something else clicks. And I can’t force it. I have to wait for my subconscious to subconsciously do its thing.

Like the time I was a teenager, trying to sew a bathrobe. I ripped out the collar so many times I nearly cried. Gave up. Went to bed. And dreamed the solution. The next morning, I sewed it exactly like my dream showed me. It worked. My subconscious figured it out while I wasn’t looking.

Possibilities

The other thing that gets in the way? Too many choices.

When I’m faced with a menu of a thousand options, I can’t choose. But I’ve learned that not choosing isn’t giving up. It’s just a pause. Maybe even a little rewind. My subconscious is brilliant—way more brilliant than me. It sifts through all those options, zeroing in on the heart of it in the background. I just have to be patient.

Peripheral Vision, Revisited

Which brings me to another experiment—again for a 52Frames challenge. The prompt was to use the wrong lens. So, I did. Or at least, I tried.

Whatever vision I started with wasn’t working. So I set it aside. But my brain kept circling it. I started thinking about how disorienting it is to shoot with the wrong lens. I couldn’t envision the photograph; my mind’s eye was blind. And somehow, that reminded me of peripheral vision—it was like trying to capture something without really seeing it.

So I tried to capture that. I wanted to know if I could create an image where the details, clarity and color were obscured on the edges. But if you try to pay attention to your peripheral vision, your front vision also loses detail, clarity and color. Your brain can’t process both at the same time! I played with mirrors and reflections and focus. The photograph I created had blur, texture, soft light, and it made my own living room feel foreign. The distortion and misalignment created a strange softness, something that felt… peripheral. On the edge.

The Edge of Sight (First in a potential series of peripheral vision photos)

And I liked it.

It was the first time I’d tried to photograph the feeling of seeing from the corner of my eye.

And now, from the side, I’ve got the start of another project – one built around the idea of peripheral vision.

Full Circle

So yes, it came full circle. I had to learn to spot a comet without looking at it. And when I started thinking about my creative process, I realized it works the same way. My best ideas often come from left field, from off to the side. They’re messy. They float on the edges. And it’s hard, but I’m learning to be patient. To let them… develop.

Yeah, pun intended. Again.

---

(One last thing, since this post is all about what floats in from the side…)

Postscript: Ms. Manly and the 15-Minute Miracle

I wasn’t planning to include this story, but it drifted back in—just like everything else in this post. In high school, I had a composition class. A required class, the kind no one ever really wants to take. The five-paragraph, outline-then-draft-then-edit kind. And even though I was a smart kid, I wasn’t doing great. My papers got Bs and Cs. I followed the formula, and it just didn’t work for me.

So one week, out of frustration, I skipped the whole process. Does the method matter if the result is going to be the same? I wrote the paper in the library during the 15-minute break right before class. No outline. No edits. Just writing.

That paper? A+. The first one I’d gotten in that class.

My teacher, Ms. Manly—who most students didn’t like, by the way—pulled me aside and asked what changed. I told her the truth. And she said, “Don’t change a thing.”

After that, every paper was written the same way: 15 minutes before class, in the library, after a week of letting the assignment take up space in the back of my mind. Ultimately, I aced the class. Ms. Manly became a friend. She held me after class to talk about books, about writing. She loaned me her favorite books. By the end, she was a favorite teacher.

And I didn’t hate writing anymore.

Looking back, I guess even then I was letting my peripheral vision and subconscious write my paper. Since then, I haven’t viewed throwing something together at the last minute as procrastination.

I view it as kind of working remotely.

Around the time I was writing 15-minute essays and the teacher who inspired me

---

So, what about you?
Do your ideas present themselves front and center, or float in from left field like mine?
I’d love to hear how your creative process works.

-Denice