Saturday, February 18, 2012

Left and Right OR 202/365

I am left-brained. And not just left brained, but SO left-brained. I like planning and structure. I'm not a heart-on-the-sleeve kind of girl. I did well in math, and love numbers. I enjoy writing. My way of thinking is sometimes so linear that rulers get jealous.

Left and Right OR 202/365

This is not to say that my right brain never speaks its voice. I have a good sense of colour. I am a visual learner. I love music. Still, right-brained thinking is certainly not my default at any given moment. That being said, I value things that are associated with the right side of the brain: creativity, art, colour, feelings. I have been trying to exercise my right brain more recently, encouraging it to take over sometimes:
  • At work, we continue to infuse more concepts from the Reggio Emilia philosophy into our playroom. The decor is coming along nicely; currently, my partner and I are trying to decide if we need to rearrange furniture to better utilize the space (feng shui, anyone?); I'm trying not to let my left brain get stuck in the functionality of the room as it currently is. We are also setting out a variety of craft materials for the children to create art with--and not just the typical crayons, pom-poms and glue. Some of our recent craft materials have included fish tank gravel, marshmallows, twigs. I have spent some time this weekend cutting shapes out of used gift cards--recycling at its most interesting. I have also decided to start scanning some of the kids' art so that our Office Manager can start embedding it into the newsletter instead of Microsoft's clip-art (no offense, Bill).
  • My photography is sometimes a paradox. The visual 'eye' needed for photography definitely comes from the right brain (I have even noticed that when I put the viewfinder up to my eye, I naturally go to my left eye, which is controlled by the right side of the brain. Interesting). That being said, I think I'm a left-brained photographer...if such a thing exists! It's taken quite a bit of training and conscious effort to remember to shoot a subject from a myriad of unique and different perspectives, let alone get crazy artistically abstract with my photos. My default is definitely to capture things as they really are, and in the moment; I'm pretty sure I don't even use a tenth of the potential that Photoshop holds for photography. And really, I'm okay with that. It's creative enough just to grab those unique perspectives of the world around me, and I've been working on doing that more often.
It is a long weekend here in Alberta, and I have been using my time today on a couple different photography projects. Letting my right brain influence my cropping, colour-matching, and organizing. I would love to see what it all looks like on an MRI...

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