Alive Time vs Dead Time In Photography
Being alive means being in the flow
Some days everything flows in my practise of photography. I get a good photograph and it’s like my day is made. A tiny celebration takes place in my mind because I feel like I have seized the day.
Most of my daily photography happens when I drive to work and back. The rides are perhaps the most interesting time of the day for me. I am alert, observing and constantly looking for what to photograph. When I start my day with a feeling that I will certainly get a great image that day, it mostly does happen! Not because of anything else but because I then have this drive in me to scan the city. The American best-selling author, Robert Greene, calls this alive time.
Did you know there is something called the dead time as well? Robert Greene says this is when we sit back, nothing flows and we wait for things to happen. We are sort of passive in our attitude. This reminded me of the COVID times. A lot of us went through ‘dead time’ during covid. While many waited for the pandemic to pass, others made good use of it. There was a boom in online creativity. People around the world used the time to learn new things. They maximised their usage of online platforms to explore their creativity.
Some days I have dead time as well. I wait for things to happen to me. When I look closely at those times, I think a certain laid-back attitude on those days ends without any photographs. Nothing strikes me nor does anything new catch my attention. This leads to some uninspired work and repetitive images.
I also feel when we get caught up with everything in life worrying about the future or thinking about the past we get into dead time. We don’t see what’s happening in front of us. We are in a state of limbo. Dead time is not so much about inactivity, it is about indifference and not putting our heart into things. While I think a day or two of dead time is okay to rejuvenate, constantly being in it is challenging.
Alive time is when we are in the present, mindful of our surroundings. We see what is happening around us. It is when I am watching the changing colours of the sky. It is when I know where birds thrive in the city, when I observe a new construction coming up on some street, or look in wonder when the trains pass by. It is when I have seen the candy man on the bridge, the workers on a building, a tree climber enjoying himself, boys walking in the rain, a bridge with the play of light and shadow and how the light falls on a woman passer-by.
I think alive time and dead time are a part of everyone’s life and it is especially true of a creator’s life. The next time any one of us feels that we are getting into a creativity rut, it is time to step back. In my opinion, challenges like taking a photo a day help to keep us inspired. Looking at the archives, segregating the images, watching a great film or reading an interesting book can bring us out of the dead time into the alive time.
The joy of photography is in the art of being alive in the moments around us.
