Cropping and Boundaries
What is Enough?
Empty space
The essential comes visible when we crop out or delete the irrelevant. Obvious, but often forgotten. This can be experienced as a concrete emotion when looking at a finished image.
What shapes do the edges create, how do they define the space, the feel of space? What weakens or even breaks the edge? What is going across the border, what is coming across the border? What is enough, what is too much or unnecessary?
Can you catch the idea and feel so that you can transfer the same kind of thinking and clarification into your own life: to days which are so easily filled with doing, irrelevant accomplishments and hoarding - all things you “should” do and are always lurking on the edges of your field of view and energy.
The meaning of empty space
We have a need to fill the space that feels empty, the void. We often do that without noticing it. However, there is no need to fear empty space, neither in life nor in images. Empty space is not irrelevant. Empty space can even be cherished, as it gives breathing space, creates new opportunities for the essential.
In images, empty space around the object is called 'negative space'. Quite a colored definition, as the empty space can be an essential part of the image, create atmosphere, highlight the subject, contribute to the story. It allows the viewer to fill the space with his/her own story. There is nothing negative about it.
So don’t crop or squeeze too much or in vain. Explore the feeling. Limit more things than space, clean your own imaginary plot.
Essential and Restrictive Boundaries in Life
What is enough?
Our environment provides us with an endless amount of stuff, stimulation, information, things to do, and requirements.
This noise easily blurs:
- what is enough for me (internal): what do I need, how much I need, what is essential to do?
- what is enough for me (external): what is useless or too much, goes overboard; That's enough!
- am I enough? Am I doing enough?
Your 'enoughs' can't be compared to anyone else’s 'enoughs'. We all have our own background and psychophysical nature. Where one thrives, the other exhausts - and vice versa.
There may be a critic inside you who never feels that you do or that you are enough. If you don’t take that critic for a serious one-on-one staff meeting, you’ll end up running yourself into exhaustion. And still, you will never gain its approval. I encourage the critic to study and learn self-compassion.
As an extra prompt, you can shoot (or draw) a picture of the critic when it appears on the scene. The critic has been identified!
Your boundaries
Personal boundaries are not for warfare or about building barriers. They define the space required for relaxed, reciprocal, respectful and compassionate interaction. And they help ensure adequate access to necessary resources.
Have you noticed that the most compassionate and gentle people have the clearest boundaries? If the limits of one’s own integrity and well-being are crossed, it is difficult to be genuinely kind to others and face them assuming good things about them and their aims.
If you are constantly pleasing others without seeing yourself and your own needs, the unconscious mind is exhausted and then gradually all your resources run out. So taking care of your boundaries doesn't necessarily make you the ’nicest’ person, but the most reliable, loving, and peaceful version of you can emerge.
We all have different types of boundaries and limits: comfort, capacity, fear, resource, wish, sisu etc. Boundaries created by our story, the world, the village, and maybe a prison in which we live. We get used to living in the surroundings and conditions we find ourselves. Subconsciously we don't believe we have the strength, resources, or possibility to step out of our cage.
Have you fitted yourself into a mini world or do you flexibly belong to the larger scenery?
Earlier we explored our shields, our protective shells, to see if they are healthy, good for us, or restrictive and heavy. Those shells are really close to us, like a skin (or they sit inside just behind our skin). Boundaries, on the other hand, determine our own space to maneuver, feel, be, and speak. They are like a garden; a personal piece of land that we enjoy as our own.
Your shields get fewer hits when your boundaries are in healthy condition. There is no need to live at the level of shields when there is enough peaceful space to move. Within the boundaries, one can be calmer and make more self-pleasing choices. This frees up resources to exceed comfort lines, step out of the comfort zone, and expand our capacity zone.
Feelings of inadequacy and a compulsion toward productivity and accomplishing have caused my own resources to be exceeded, driven by excessive doing. They have also caused leakages to my boundaries so that people and things have entered into my space without my explicit consent. Those unwanted visitors consume my vitality and obscure the essentials. This kind of exceeding of resource or capacity limits is often unnoticeable and happens way too easily. Before I notice, I'm facing my sisu limit, and I'm crossing the border into the heart of exhaustion.
However, in addition to resource limits, there may also be fear boundaries. The fear boundary is "comfort zone limit on steroids". They shackle your authentic expression, courage, change, creativity.
Can you recognise your own fear boundaries as well as someone else's?
Drawing the Line
If you find it difficult to harness your feelings of anger constructively and understandably in situations that require you to draw lines, act proactively and make a list of what you want to say yes to: your own humanity, interest, need, goal, value, order of priority. Your list tells you what you want to create or protect when you say ‘no’.
Mirror your challenges, opportunities, and answers to your 'yes' list. What kind of change you make by saying 'no' to something - what does ‘no’ make possible? What kind of change do you create by saying 'yes' - what does ‘yes’ prevent and what does it allow?
"As soon as there's resentment I know it's because I didn't hold a boundary"
- Brené Brown
Like with darkness, there is no need to fear emptiness in images.
You can explore your boundaries through photographs
Taking and looking at your own image brings the focus to yourself, to your own needs. They become visible when you dare to stop and look at yourself. Accept that it is not selfish to start living your own life and stop living the lives of others. Weed the old and plant the new.
When you are processing a situation by photographing or you want to transmit the atmosphere in your photo, consider:
- What disturbs the story?
- What is important and should be more on display?
- From which angle does the essential get the main part?
- Does the new angle give a whole new perspective to the story?
- Does something need more space - or feel of closeness and security?
Elements in the picture can be metaphors for the things and people in your life.
My Cup Is Overflowing
Photographer Suvi Sievilä's touching project “My Cup Is Overflowing” combines photographs, videos, introspection, poems and texts into an impressive story.
“I wanted to illustrate the feeling when enough is enough. The feeling when everything spills over. What is enough and when too much really is too much? What is the last straw? I wanted to tell a story about the depths of the human mind. About how the whole world is reflected in person's own innermost being. I created a mental landscape that is personal, but through which I could also tell about the multidimensionality of interpretations.
A series of pictures of a woman living in a leaking house were drawn to my mind picture by picture.”
- Suvi Sievilä (http://suvisievila.com/minun-maljani-on-ylitsevuotavainen/ - text in Finnish only)
SISU
To the Finnish people, sisu has a mystical, almost magical meaning. Sisu is a unique Finnish concept. It is a Finnish term that can be roughly translated into English as strength of will, determination, perseverance, and acting rationally in the face of adversity.
Sisu is not momentary courage, but the ability to sustain that courage. It is a word that cannot be fully translated. It defines the Finnish people and their character. It stands for the philosophy that what must be done will be done, regardless of cost.
Sisu is an inherent characteristic of the Finnish people. You might call it backbone, spunk, stamina, guts, or drive and perseverance. It is a measure of integrity that surpasses the hardship and sees through to the end.
Sisu is the quality that lets them pick up, move on, and learn something from previous failures. It’s the hard-jawed integrity that makes them pay their war debts in full. In short, it’s the indomitable will that sets Finns apart and explains many of the incredible things they do.
From ’Our Finnish Heritage’ by Finlandia University
THERE IS NO PERFECTION
in fitting in everything possible
into life, to-do lists or an image.
THERE IS PERFECTION
in inclusion of only
essential and necessary
elements.
PROMPTS | Part 5
1. Build and Photograph Your Boundary Line
Step 1
It's time to play again.
Build your current boundary border guided by intuition and emotions,
don't think too much, don't analyse, don't criticise.
Use whatever materials you have available and which you are drawn to. If you can, go outside and use natural materials (e.g. twigs, water, stone, moss, etc.), but make it yours.
How does it feel to concretize borders?
Take photo 1.
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Step 2
Locate the loiterers at your borders.
Who or what things are constantly disturbing your boundaries? Imagine these loiterers knocking on your boundaries.
Put them concretely at the right distance from your boundary borders. Use materials you have available.
Don't think too much, follow your gut.
Stop for a moment to choose the angle of view for your photo.
Take photo 2.
Now go and take those photos first.
Read Step 3 AFTER you have taken above 2 photos. I know, hard not to read it now, but if you want to do this intuitively, do as I suggest.
---
Step 3
Analyse your photos
The structure of your boundary line on your photo: Did you define and construct your boundary so that it delimits the unwanted outside (concrete, demarcating your own space) or did you protect yourself so that the boundary actually prevents your own actions due to fear or sacrifice (fear boundary)? Is your boundary structure durable, visible and understandable enough, does it communicate in a friendly way? Did you leave yourself enough room to move so that the shields near your core self are not activated all the time? Is the boundary you build flexible, comfortable, and breathable so you can stay connected to others?
Loiterers (or snoopers, snipers, knockers as Google translator suggested...): Are they touching your border or are they a little further away? Is anyone/anything inside your border? What do they want? Can you change the situation? Can you say no? How would saying no feel in your body? Can you feel adequate and good, even if you say no? How does it feel to say yes even if you want to say no? Who would you like to be closer to or invite within your borders?
2. Notice The Weight
Photo 1: Photograph an object/thing, in a way that it almost fills the frame. Go close.
Photo 2: Take another photo in a way that the same object/thing is really small and the surrounding (empty) space is dominant. Shoot from distance.
You can also do this with one photo, by cropping it afterwards.
Analyse your photos: Did the weight, significance or the feeling you have towards the object/thing change?
Upload your photos to the Photoyoga WhatsApp Group
Mark your photos: BOUNDARY and WEIGHT
”Here, right now, only me.
My movement sends waves so small
or as big as I want.If I just breathe, the silky surface of the water
stays.”- Tuula Ahde
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