Today’s shared story comes from Stacy Chizuk who has a background in social work and a passion for photography.
Doing what I love is like unplugging from time. When I step into my creative self, I am not bogged down by thoughts of “to do” lists or haunted by plaguing “what-ifs” or the self-destructive “shoulds”. When I do what I love, that ticking clock in my head stops and a joy emerges that I often forget dwells in my soul.
I picked up a camera when my first son was born six years ago and I never put it down. My Canon is always thrown around my neck, riding shot gun in my car or stuffed down inside my diaper bag. I started with a basic point and shoot and have gradually upgraded throughout the years. My grandfather was a photographer and on his deathbed five years ago he asked me to carry on the tradition of photographing the family. I agreed wholeheartedly. Growing up I never understood why he would take my sister’s and my photographs so often. We would groan and hide from his large Nikon lens, especially during those awkward pre-pubescent years (picture the 80’s hair coupled with heavy black eyeliner). Then after the birth of my first child I understood. I appreciated the desire to capture a moment of time. In capturing that moment I discovered the challenge to comprehend the magic and mathematics of the light, decipher the mechanics of the camera, and to gaze through the lens as if my own kaleidoscope into the world. I became addicted.
I left the field of social work after giving birth to my first child. However, I still wanted to give back in some way without feeling I was losing myself in the giving. I had always loved writing since I was a child and taking the quote from a random postcard I purchased in one of those funky incense-smelling shops, I decided to “take the leap and build my wings on the way down” and I started a photography blog. My intention was to only post photos but it unfolded into a forum for me to write. I write for myself. I write to set free the incessant, sometimes humorous, sometimes solemn thoughts that camp inside my head. When I began to hear my authentic self in my words and see that self in my photographs, I discovered a feeling best described as a liminal moment. A liminal moment as described by author Rebecca Wells in her book Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, “Those moments apart from time, when you are gripped, taken, when you are so fully absorbed in what you are doing that time ceases to exist.” So I began Liminal Moments Photography.
Since starting my blog and a small photography business, I have been able to incorporate a piece of my social work self in photographing children in foster care that are looking for an adoptive family. Many of these children love the personal attention a photo shoot brings and they often are my favorite kids to capture!
Their ability to smile and shine despite traumatic childhoods is inspirational. When I see my photographs of these children displayed in public arenas, I feel both excited because the photograph truly captures their spirit, yet heartbroken because the reality is their pictures are there because they need a family to love them. My goal in taking their photo is to capture their essence, their spirit, their love. If I can do that, then hopefully I will have helped them in some small part along their journey.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes in her book Women Who Run With the Wolves, “a woman’s creative ability is her most valuable asset, for it gives outwardly and it feeds her inwardly at every level: psychic, spiritual, mental, emotive, and economic.” When I hold my camera in my hands or free my words through my blog out into cyberspace, I feel as though my soul is being fed. I hope it touches others and helps to ignite their creative spark.
[Images courtesy of Stacy Chizuk.]
To find out more about Stacy visit her website.
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