It's been quite some time since I last wrote here; but as you may have guessed this year has been quite busy. Unfortunately not in the world of creativity for me even though I did find some very important and memorable times during the year.The year has been full of many activities, but there is one set of activities that I wish to write about today as it has been on my heart for a few months and I have finally gotten around to making the time for it now. This subject is on Mentoring. You see over the Summer months this year I had a couple of opportunities to spend some important time with my niece and nephew. They are 9 and 13 years of age respectively.
With my niece, Kalysta, we went to the Devonian Gardens just West of the city; where Kalysta started to learn little things like how to hold a camera, framing her photos and what kinds of things of images she wanted to create. It was here that her love of butterflies came out and the Butterfly house at the Devonian is a great place to see so many different species - so beautiful.
Konour and I went to a couple of places. The first was the Legislature grounds and the second was the Muttart. For Konour it was not only a time of expanding his creativity, but also experiencing familiar places in a more interactive way. Because Konour was a little older; he learned about things like playing with time, depth of field and patience. He learned so keenly and quickly that he was able to make a leap in creativity and was hard to stop as Konour just wanted to keep on going. I believe Konour's fascination was with time. He loved exploring how you could show movement in different ways just by adjusting the shutter speed.So what is Mentoring anyways?
The Oxford Canadian Dictionary describes it as a person who is an experienced and trusted adviser or guide. This doesn't say very much about such an important job. If you looked at it as a means to guiding and inspiring the next generation mentoring can start the creative juices flowing.
Why Mentor?
Some out there tend to stray away from mentoring - and there are many reasons why. The top three I've come across are:
- to limit the competition - why train my competition?
- feel inadequate to train - I'm not as good as someone else...
- no time - I would but I'm to busy...
Unfortunately I have fallen into some of these excuses myself and at the time they seemed valid. One of my goals for this coming year is to not only take out my niece and nephew again, but to add at least one other young person. Perhaps this might be my new daughter...who knows. The other side of this coin is that without people stepping up to mentor and inspire the next generation we all loose out and some talents become a sort of dying breed (how many people out there still now how to embroider something other than in cross stitch?). Even though this site focuses on photography; you needent limit this concept to the area of photography; as long as it's something you are passionate about and you are willing to share it with someone else in a somewhat productive manor. (In other words show your passion and your care)
The other issue I've seen has been the attitude of "I want to do it myself and not have someone tell me what to do..." type of thinking. The issue here would be finding those souls willing and wanting to apprentice with you. Thankfully there are those out there like my niece and nephew as well as some that are older who are thirsty for someone to spend time with them and possibly inspire them to press on further. All we need to do is open the door to the possibility.
It was great for me to see such great creativity come out of these excursions not to mention the absolute joy both Kalysta and Konour showed when they were entrusted with something special - Aunty's expensive camera. I was able to see things that they saw in a new light as well. It wasn't just about the camera for them though. I believe that it also had to do with the value they felt - that they were worth spending time with, there thoughts were important and that they were given the opportunity to exercise their creative side while being able to make their own decisions about what they envisioned to create and to learn how to correct it when the image didn't turn out the way they wanted it to.
With these experiences I've come to value Mentoring more now than I ever did before. The time spent is well worth the effort. After all for all intense and purpose mentoring is the honor of helping someone to realize a dream, a potential or possibly both. Who could ask for a more fulling position than that?So here's to inspiring the next creative generation in 2010... Happy New Year everyone!
