How to Be an Artist and Trust Your Trained Hand

Sometimes the most captivating art is accidental, even for someone hellbent on controlling every pixel.

This rang true for a composite image titled “Troupe of One” that won first place in the Children and Teen category for the Grand Imaging Awards in 2024. I was streaming the creation of my work for competition and exhibition on twitch. I tend to be pretty efficient (read: bored easily) and so I needed to take on a task that would offer some time consuming structure while I chatted with people viewing the stream. 

One of my daughters was deeply into dance at that time and loved nothing more than spinning and twirling in my studio in front of the camera. Despite a notebook filled with curated ideas sketched out and titles that needed work to match, we went to the studio without a plan. I think we both needed that. She needed to let her blonde hair flow down her back, free from the tight bun of ballet. She needed to dance with carefree abandon that wasn’t always a part of her studio training. I needed to let go of the desire to direct every ray of light falling on my subject. I needed to stop myself from choreographing how she might move with the light. I needed to let her be. I needed to just be.

As she danced through the light of a single softbox camera right, I kept my exposure at 1/250 per second and aperture at 9 to keep a crisp focus as her hair swept across her face. I didn’t bounce any light- I allowed the drama, the grit of shadows. 

I wasn’t even sure I would get to the images any time soon or if I ever would at all. I have a tendency to photograph when we have a free day in the schedule, and then hold on to the images until another free day arrives. Sometimes those are infrequent. That turned out to be the case this time. Soccer season consumed my family with the kids playing and me coaching. Months passed via a full schedule and as the mornings turned colder, I said a very unexpected goodbye to a close friend, leaving my family reeling with grief. While a lot of my exhibition work centers around grief, sometimes it’s a little too soon to focus through fresh tears. So back to the project with no plan. 

I could chat about the World Cup and focus on carving out the varying poses without deep thought. It was a similar need to our carefree day in the studio when we shot the images.The project without a plan started to take place in Photoshop over a livestream chat about soccer. Balancing the light, the poses became an obsession. I was creating a composition from what was available. I began telling a story that I hadn’t written yet.

Since I didn’t know what the product “should” look like, I wasn’t sure when I was done. I decided to enter it into a couple of competitions.The American Society of Photographers annual competition and the Indiana State Guild competitions as predecessors to the Professional Photographers of America’s Grand Imaging Awards. From there, I could pick at it. That has become a favorite part of creating art; the part where you step away, try to forget it, and come back to a fresh perspective of where you can improve it. Opportunity in every pixel.

So I entered these competitions with what I considered an unpolished and unready image. I entered it alongside 3 other images -those had been curated, planned out, sketched, prepared, obsessed over. Those images earned silver and bronze- second and third place. Behind “Troupe of One”. It took first in both competitions. Nothing to change. Nothing to adjust. Unprecedented for me. I entered it unchanged into 2 more competitions. 2 more first place awards. 

Against every natural instinct I had, I entered this image as is into the Grand Imaging Awards. I watched in awe as it moved through preliminary rounds and eventually to the finals of the Children and Teens category, eventually winning first place. It was a magical night.

While the meticulous planning, doing and re-doing all had a hand in my preparation, this prize was earned by allowing myself the freedom to take a different route to the end product. 

Be a technician. Be meticulous. Tell a story. At the end of the day, be an artist and trust your trained hand.

Watch and learn more about this image by Aly Elliott here.