These are two of my favourite shots that I took in the last couple of weeks for my project 365 – where I take 365 photos in a year. I love the “different view of the world” idea that these two shots give.
The first image is taken beneath a tree looking up through the leaves at the afternoon sky.
The second image is taken of beach sand. On the West Coast of New Zealand, most of the beaches are black sand beaches. The incredible thing about black sand beaches though is that when the sand becomes wet, it becomes a virtual mirror and will reflect anything. The shot that I took is of the sun and clouds reflected in the sand.
The most fascinating thing about any form of art is that is makes you look at the world with different eyes. I think that is what fuels my creativity – my search for it, my need for it, my passion for it, my focus for it. I love the way creativity makes ordinary images suddenly extraordinary. That is the true wonder of all creative arts for me:
Creativity in the hands of imagination and the heart of inspiration has the ability to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, the plain into the beautiful, the simple into the challenge, the view into a vision.
Whether I am writing a poem, or working on some prose or even taking a photograph – I am transported into a world of the POSSIBLE. Suddenly dreams can be reached and the stars are within touching distance. My common and ordinary troubles seem to disappear for those moments when I am focused on creativity.
I need to be creative. For me not to be able to write or create is like a thirsty man in a desert. I may survive for a short time but “survive” will be the operative word. I will not be able to live with ease. For like water fuels a person’s body, creativity fuels my heart and nurtures my soul. I drink in words like that thirsty man near death drinks in water. Those who know me well know that the best torture for me would be to take away my pens and my paper. I would find a way to write even if it were with my nails scratching into a wall.
Writing is therapy for me. Some people go to psychiatrists and lie on couches telling a stranger their problems. I believe in the healing power of therapy but I do not go to a psychiatrist. Writing is my therapist. Words are my medicine. Poetry is my recovery. How do I describe myself? I am a writer. Whether I had nothing published or whether I am published in 50 languages: I am a writer. Irregardless. I am a writer. It is the only passion that keeps me sane. It helps me understand the world in its idiotic simplicity and its terrible complexities. It helps me understand myself and puts words to the wordless emotions that fill my heart to overfill. When I put a pen in my hand and put that pen to paper that is when the world makes sense. In a senseless and cruel world; writing is my form of release, escape and succor. Without writing I will not cease to exist. But I would be no better than a prisoner in solitary confinement for a lifetime sentence. Writing makes the world a better place for me. Writing makes me a better person for the world.
Hippocrates put is perfectly:
Ars longa,
vita brevis,
occasio praeceps,
experimentum periculosum,
iudicium difficile.(translated)
Life is short,
[the] art long,
opportunity fleeting,
experiment dangerous,
judgment difficult.”
— Hippocrates
What does creativity mean to you?
© All Rights Reserved Kim Koning.
Kim Koning 
Beautifully spoken! And I learned something new, about the black sand!
Thank you. 🙂