Artistic improvement - and life is art
I'm feeling introspective today.
Several times this week I found myself delving into my archives. The artifacts I brought back to the present would get me thinking, wondering, conversing, and in the end going back to the past for more. Through these trips back and forth in my personal time machine, I uncovered several truths.
For starters, I used to have more hair.
My photography has improved significantly. One of my destinations was 2004 - yesterday I posted the photos from what will be my last Imprint staff lunch, I thought it would be fitting if I posted the photos from my first staff lunch as well. My. God. You can for yourselves compare my photos from Winter 2004 and Winter 2008. Though some of my limitations were imposed by my old equipment (lighting at staff lunch is always terrible, a dedicated flash is a must) those old photographs show me my limited skill as much as the people in them. My framing was awful.
Though I speak of photographs most often, my archives actually contain a fair quantity of text. While photographs and text are similar in that both gain meaning over time, both drag me back to moments past (for better or worse), and both elicit an emotional response, only the writings show me how I've changed as a person. I stumbled across bits from 1995 earlier this week and judged that incarnation of myself juvenile - which is to be expected. But today I met myself from 2006. Frankly, I was appalled at the awkward individual I found.
I was making dinner tonight, simultaneously working myself through the requite thought process of, "If only I could do X again; I could do it differently." But at the end of that process, I discovered a dissonance.
Truth be told, my old photographs being crap didn't bother me at all. Anyone working within a visual medium should damn well hope their new material looks better than their old. Compare Penny Arcade of this year with their work 10 years ago. Bad comics, in contrast, seldom improve. That my old photography is terrible compared to the new was a sign I was doing something right.
Why was I satisfied with respect to photography, but applying a different standard to myself as a whole?
I tried to think of some incarnation of myself that wouldn't be embarrassed upon meeting the boy two years his junior, and frankly I couldn't do it. One thing I can say about my time at university is that it's certainly been punctuated by transformative events. Hell, I'm not the same person I was three months ago, or the beginning of this month, or the beginning of this week. Ultimately, I decided that finding fault with how I've conducted myself in the past was, too, a sign I was doing something right - opportunities taken rather than opportunities lost.
And so on, into the future. If I don't look back on the writings from this era and see naïveté, or evidence of some personal flaw which I've since fought back, I've done something wrong.
Even taking into account the deliberately different art styles, marked improvement can be seen in Perry Bible Fellowship as well. I could have used Gunnerkriegg Court as my example as easily as Penny Arcade. Even XKCD, as minimalist as stick figures are, shows improvement from its origin. Dinosaur comics is a special case.
Several times this week I found myself delving into my archives. The artifacts I brought back to the present would get me thinking, wondering, conversing, and in the end going back to the past for more. Through these trips back and forth in my personal time machine, I uncovered several truths.
For starters, I used to have more hair.
My photography has improved significantly. One of my destinations was 2004 - yesterday I posted the photos from what will be my last Imprint staff lunch, I thought it would be fitting if I posted the photos from my first staff lunch as well. My. God. You can for yourselves compare my photos from Winter 2004 and Winter 2008. Though some of my limitations were imposed by my old equipment (lighting at staff lunch is always terrible, a dedicated flash is a must) those old photographs show me my limited skill as much as the people in them. My framing was awful.
Though I speak of photographs most often, my archives actually contain a fair quantity of text. While photographs and text are similar in that both gain meaning over time, both drag me back to moments past (for better or worse), and both elicit an emotional response, only the writings show me how I've changed as a person. I stumbled across bits from 1995 earlier this week and judged that incarnation of myself juvenile - which is to be expected. But today I met myself from 2006. Frankly, I was appalled at the awkward individual I found.
I was making dinner tonight, simultaneously working myself through the requite thought process of, "If only I could do X again; I could do it differently." But at the end of that process, I discovered a dissonance.
Truth be told, my old photographs being crap didn't bother me at all. Anyone working within a visual medium should damn well hope their new material looks better than their old. Compare Penny Arcade of this year with their work 10 years ago. Bad comics, in contrast, seldom improve. That my old photography is terrible compared to the new was a sign I was doing something right.
Why was I satisfied with respect to photography, but applying a different standard to myself as a whole?
I tried to think of some incarnation of myself that wouldn't be embarrassed upon meeting the boy two years his junior, and frankly I couldn't do it. One thing I can say about my time at university is that it's certainly been punctuated by transformative events. Hell, I'm not the same person I was three months ago, or the beginning of this month, or the beginning of this week. Ultimately, I decided that finding fault with how I've conducted myself in the past was, too, a sign I was doing something right - opportunities taken rather than opportunities lost.
And so on, into the future. If I don't look back on the writings from this era and see naïveté, or evidence of some personal flaw which I've since fought back, I've done something wrong.
Even taking into account the deliberately different art styles, marked improvement can be seen in Perry Bible Fellowship as well. I could have used Gunnerkriegg Court as my example as easily as Penny Arcade. Even XKCD, as minimalist as stick figures are, shows improvement from its origin. Dinosaur comics is a special case.