space, time and big magic

In my talk called ‘the space between’ that I first created for the On Landscape Meeting of the Minds Landscape Photography Conference, in the Lake District at Perth, United Kingdom, I started to explore the idea that giving yourself time and space in your life is important for magic to happen.

This is more esoteric and perhaps philosophical knowledge, than practical artists knowledge. But I think it rings true no matter what you are doing.

In the talk I use this example of a morning on the Great Ocean Road. Which, by the way, I will be doing a workshop in June with Peter Eastway at next year.

On this beautiful morning I was playing with the water and the gorgeous cliffs opposite me. Waterfalls of seawater pouring over the rocks. The morning was towards the end of the workshop and everyone was off on their own, leaving me with space and time. After the first few images, and a good hour of making art, I decided to stop, and rest. To just sit and contemplate. To sip some tea from my thermos.

I gave myself some space and time to just be. To ground and centre myself. To be mindful.

Then….

…it happened.

At that time, when one gives oneself some space. When we create space in our lives, that is when the magic happens.

The rainbow emerged, and landed. I easily and gently moved to place it right on the cliff that the sunshine hitting it. And this is the result.

While it is only a small and visual example of this phenomenon, I believe it is one that has much much bigger life consequences and indeed is full of big magic.

It is when you create space in your life, space to allow yourself the pleasure of not knowing what is going to happen, that is when big magic happens.

Open up time in your life, for you, and for your art. See what happens?

Hopefully some big magic will happen for you.

You can hear this talk, and seven others in my camera club series. These are my most important talks, each on different aspects of photography, whenever you like on my website. https://www.lensschool.com/camera-club-presentations-1

Photograph and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2024