Thank You Notes

How Joy Emerged Accidentally Through a Photography Community

Photography Has a Way of Healing Your Soul

The writing prompt or theme this week in Thank You Notes is finding your creative joy. I read that as creating joy and immediately thought about how joy had emerged during a time in my life accidentally through a photography community.

The long, hard truth is that my life path and family model didn’t teach me how to create or understand joy. Years of therapy taught me that I needed to know joy or else my body would only remember the traumas, holding them in the crevices. That’s what happened until I broke down completely. In other words, I was bedridden for six months.

From that point on, I turned to my creative side in a way that I had never done so before. There isn’t a lot you can do while being in bed. At the time, I was curious about the excitement of Instagram. This was back in 2013.

I had an interest in photography since I was young and even had a darkroom years ago. Yes, this was back in the days of film only. Now I have several digital cameras as well as my treasured film cameras. I just can’t part with them. They spark a joy within me that digital just can’t do. Regardless of which camera I choose to shoot with, photography always has a way of healing my soul.

As I scrolled through Instagram, I found great delight in the amazing photography I was seeing. And then I stumbled upon an Instagram community — @jj-community. Within the larger community were smaller regional communities.

At the time, I lived in Los Angeles, so I thought — why not? What else do I have to do? I formed a community called @jj-los angeles, which eventually morphed into @jj-westcoast. I began forming a regional community wrapped around photography. Every day we (myself and my moderators) featured photographers, giving them encouragement to keep doing what they were already doing!

Eventually, I began to have meet-ups. It was amazing to me to watch the community that formed within those times. People were helping each other.

I didn’t necessarily find joy in the organizational part, but I was overjoyed at watching the people connect. In fact, one of the impromptu meet-ups I advertised on my personal page @nbluxstudio was a day when the waves were high in Orange County.

I called a photographer buddy and asked if he wanted to go shoot that day. Off we went. Both of us were crouched in the rocks, shooting the waves as they crashed nearby.

All of a sudden, I got a message from someone, “Are you still out there?”

“Yes,” I replied in a message and then added my phone number so they could text me.

“Ok, I got off work early and I’d like to join you.”

About a half-hour later, I got a text saying, “Are you wearing a blue shirt?”

“Yes,” I texted.

“I think I’m right behind you.”

I couldn’t turn around because I was wedged into a rocky area, so I unwedged and turned around to greet a young man I had never seen before. We spent the better part of an hour sitting on the rocks.

“I don’t have a camera,” he said sheepishly.

“Do you have a phone?”

“Yeahhhhh,” he said cautiously.

“Then you have a camera,” I said. “Many people show up to our meet-ups and don’t have cameras. That’s not what this is about.”

“Oh! That’s great. I’ve been trying to find a safe community.”

And just like that, he said the magic word, “safe.” I had realized this after my first meet-up. People wanted a safe group of people to hang out with. I didn’t ask questions and I certainly wasn’t one to judge.

What I quickly learned is that this group that kept tagging to our daily hashtag was a hidden talent. They were street-smart, self-taught photographers. At our next meet-up, that young man showed up and ended up making friends with one of the more professional photographers.

And, that’s what brings me joy.

I am thankful for those days. It was a time that renewed my love of photography as well as showing me that laughter and joy can be instituted while you’re doing something you love.

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