A couple of things about intentions and the creative process.
Intentions are good for guidelines and general directions. Other than that, I think its best to follow your experience of the moment. Let the intention set the stage but make your experience of the moment the main driver of action.
If we let them, expectations can keep us from experiencing the moment as it is and with our mind distracted with what it wants, will most likely ignore what the moment is offering.
For example, when driving around for a place to stop and shoot at, I just give myself some general direction of more or less which direction to take, like warehouses, tall buildings, water, or one of my favorites: store fronts. Other than that, I let what I’m thinking about, talking to myself about, seeing, smelling along the way; start making the specific decisions of where to take turns until I spot something that stops me, at which point I park. I other words, I plan enough to get me started, but leave the rest to what I make of the moment. Otherwise, if I let myself have more specific expectations of finding something, then I find myself driving around a lot longer without success.
In general, once you train your eye and practice improvisation frequently enough, the specific “where’ becomes irrelevant. You can make good pictures anywhere. It becomes more a matter of caressing and intentionally stimulating your inner experience, increasing your awareness of both your self and the world as you experience it. It is playing with yourself in order to push yourself, to open yourself, to become playful yet masterful, elusive yet succinct. At least that is the intention.
Those of us who practice it enough, know there are ebbs and flows, and not everything is as it seems. There are times of inspiration and serendipity, and there are times of feeling clumsy and awkward, and to complicate things further, whether we feel good or bad during the moment, has no direct bearing on the resulting quality of the work. I can't count the times I've come back from a shoot feeling defeated, casting my camera aside for the moment, only to find great pictures when I look at them with fresh eyes.
In a world where nothing is certain (intention-wise), everything becomes as certain as everything else. Under this type uncertainty, we can create with certainty. Certainty is power in art and it is graceful when it comes from a place of humility and honesty. Each artist holds some certainties close to heart. One certainty I hold is that beauty is all around us and it is we who do normally see it for what it is, or what it can be. That things can be much more than what we take them for granted for.
Artists in general share a basic certainty, and I must say the most important one, that the artist knows he/she would rather have tried and failed, than to have not tried at all.
Everything we can say this about, is a primary essence of ours. These primary certainties fuel our passions. Every time the work is challenged, isn't liked, appreciated or falls on dead ears (or eyes); the artist answers this question time and time again.
Not because it will someday work, we hope it will, but because we are better for it just by doing it. Life without it would be unbearably empty. It is a fruit born of our essence.
It is with these certainties that I create in the uncertain. In uncertain locations for my photographs and consequently with uncertain subjects under uncertain circumstances. The willingness and openness to explore more and more with a curious eye, and the belief that doing so, even if it "fails" is better than nothing.
Certainties provide the essence of the work, the inner compass. The ultimate and only true audience. Everything else shifts, becomes fuzzy, unclear. Everything else is relative.
Andres Gonzalez
