Images and Ideas

I posted a picture a week or two ago of a paten and chalice.  I took the picture for the cover of The Foundation's annual report, but I didn't just pick up the objects and my camera and snap a picture. First, I prepared.  I thought about what I wanted the picture to be, and I planned it in my mind.  Then I did probably at least 100 images, just testing out what I wanted the image to look like and how I could make that picture in my mind come to life.  I pulled the best of those images and electronically put it on the cover, to see what it might look like.  I evaluated it, and critiqued it, deciding what might need to be changed.

After that, I prepared again, selecting the best time of day to get "the image," buying the bread, getting my materials together.  And when all was ready, I took everything down to the chapel and took at least 200 more pictures.  I went through them all, and selected a few that came close to what I was imagining.  I dropped each into the Annual Report file, trying them out, and then selected the final one.  I put it in the Annual Report, moved it around, cropped it, moved the text, undid selections and redid them - it wasn't just drop and go.  And throughout this process, I sought the opinion of other people about what I was doing.

What I want to stress is that I didn't just take one picture.  I took hundreds.  I knew that was necessary to find the one I wanted to use.

I was in a seminar this past weekend.  The speaker said, "Remember that you are not your ideas.  Don't become personally attached to them."  When we do church work (or any kind of work), we bring our ideas to the table, and use them, with others, as springboard to where we need and want to go.  We'll need hundreds of them before we get to the one that is right.  We'll take pieces of one idea and combine it with another, we'll use one idea to spring board to something none of of ever thought about.  If we are too personally attached to one idea, then we never get to the best idea.

"If I have 1000 ideas, and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied." -- Alfred Nobel