The Sky as a Tool to Express Mood

Overwhelming emotions have always been a part of my life, and I think they have been with everyone. When I looked for words to express them I was left wanting. But, after watching the sky, some of those unvoiced feelings finally feel heard. Growing up I've tried to use my Bipolar disorder to my advantage rather than let it eat away at me like most of my relatives do. What I've been able to get out of this condition is the first hand experience of life alternating between an extreme mix of peaks and lows, which I think have caused me to have a more vivid sense of empathy and a deeper understanding of feeling. Because of that, I've always turned to art as a way to capture tone, or what I'd call the overarching feeling of a piece.

Most of the emotions I drew from when I started art were negative - feelings of paranoia, depression, anxiety and the like - and so I channeled all of them into my writing. As a result I started producing these really absurd, abrasive, and hopeless stories.

Writing was a great outlet for me to experiment with those feelings and to cope with them, but a lot of my writing carries an almost unwelcoming sense of dread. What's weird, is that it's usually side by side with what some of my readers have called a well developed sense of humor.

But by the time I started experimenting with other mediums I was a bit tired off all of these heavy, doom and gloom, poverty and depravity themes I'd spent years with. Instead I wanted to capture things that were pleasant, ones where "the point" hit you immediately. No commentary, no morality, just the offering of nice views.

Instead of extending the horror of a lot of my work into a new medium, what I wanted was a library of things to visit and find a reassurance of the positive in life. When I started photography it was to build a library of mellow pictures to look at when I needed to calm myself.

Now there are shots that I'd like to share, so it's not as private as it was before, but the mission is mostly the same. I want to contribute photographs that help us slow down and feel zen for a minute.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures that I contributed, they're some of the ones from my collection that especially speak to me. Everything is shot with a Canon T5. See you around, Steemians.