Blog #116 Shoot For Your Health

June 29, 2018 • Leave a Comment

Our beloved passion and preferred art form has its risks. The lure and expense of that new body or lens can cause stress and financial hardship. The physical risks of making images in the midst of a busy street in an urban environment should be abundantly clear. Exposure to the great outdoors through adverse weather such as heat stroke or frostbite while pursuing that must-see landscape on that ultra-high mountain peak can literally hurt you. Underwater photography is downright risky business.

Nikon D610

Nevertheless, there are health benefits to regular interaction with making arts when practiced with a certain level of rigour. In a recent article by Jane Brody in Health Times titled Using the Arts to Promote Healthy Aging, the author reports on various mental as well as physical health benefits to the elderly that have been found and reported in recent years.

It’s reassuring to know we may be drawing with light well into old age. While pursuing perfection might not be a reasonable objective, that shouldn’t stop us from the pursuit of what the Japanese call Kaizen (改善).

There are social and creative muscles that we may exercise well into our later years and that “keeper” image might be just around the next corner or in that undeveloped roll of film. So buy that camera, buy that lens, start that project, print that book. Get the work done and know that it’s good for you and will continue to be good for you in the coming years. The benefits of making art are not always apparent or tangible but somehow we feel them, we know that they are there.

We’ve all heard the old adage, An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

How about we update that to, Shoot a roll a day to keep the doctor away?

I don’t know about you, but I’ll start tomorrow and see how it goes. I know one thing, and that is that it couldn’t hurt.

The light is always right.

jhg

*Images: © Jeremy H. Greenberg

Where: San Diego, CA, USA

Subject: All B&W Travel and Street Photography Images from recent trip to SoCal.

Gear: iPhone & Fujifilm X-E3 Mirrorless Digital Camera [Zoom Lens]

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