This entry is going to be different from the last entries, because I am chaining the way I present my ipone-o-graphs of the day. It all started the other day when I read an article posted by a friend. It was called Inspiration vs. Imitation by Jessica Hische. I read the article and thought it was a great article. After reading the article I went on my daily routines and it was like I was carrying a little seed inside of me. Each day the seed got a little bigger and day after day it kept growing until I started wondering if I was actually imitating a fellow artist that I admire. Unfortunately that seed inside my stomach was growing because I was imitating an amazing artist, and I didn't even know it. Apparently my conscience did after reading the article but it took my mind a while to catch up. I am sick to my stomach over the whole thing and as hard as this is to share, I feel I owe it to the other photographer to have a post about this.
As you have read in my first post about the iPhone-o-graphs of the day I truly was inspired by the article I shared and my inspiration is valid for why I wanted to take an iPhone-o-graph a day. Where I went wrong was when I was trying to figure out how to lay them out and how to present them. I looked up to an artist that I remembered did entires from her iPhone and I looked at the way she layed the images out and did the exact same thing. BAD ASHLEY!!! I really should have known better, but at the time I didn't think there was anything wrong with laying it out the same way. The seed inside my stomach knew better though. Even though my idea for the project was from inspiration I did not come up with the layout on my own and I was imitating an artist I looked up, which is in no way a form of flattery.
Once the seed got big enough to make me realize I was doing something wrong. I emailed the other artist immediately. I apologized and explained what I thought I might have unintentionally done to her and waited for her response. She emailed me back and was completely understanding but did feel that my work was too similar to hers and was actually going to email me about it. She was glad I emailed her first and we talked back and forth for a bit and came to the conclusion that I just needed to change the layout of my project. She was so nice and understanding and told me that she knew I wasn't intentionally copying her, and told me she had no hard feelings. I am truly grateful that this artist understood where I was coming from, and that I did not set out to copy what she did. In the end that is what it looked like though, and that makes me incredibly ashamed that I could be so ignorant. I know that we all make mistakes and that we make mistakes to learn from them, but this one is very hard to live with. To the artist, from the bottom of my heart I am extremely sorry and I am eternally grateful that you forgave me and were so understanding.
The characteristic about myself that I value most, is being honest. So I didn't feel right not explaining this on my blog and owning up to the fact that I made a horrible mistake. I know that I truly did not purposely set out to copy what this artist was doing, but that doesn't change the fact that I was basically ripping off her design. This really shows how much I have to grow, but I know I will never make this mistake again. I wanted to share this experience mainly because I feel it is the right thing to do, but also for an educational purpose. I feel that if I can make this mistake without knowing it, others could too. So I am going to post the link that my friend posted of Inspiration vs. Imitation by Jessica Hische, to educate creatives.
{click here}
Now to introduce my own design for the iPhone-o-graphs of the day. I thought it would be fun to make them look like little polaroids and I am currently arranging them into 2 rows of 4 and I am going to be doing an entry every week now. Since I started this project to document my life I am also adding in captions about that image to remind me even more of that day when I look back at the image. I feel this fits much better because it will make the project more personal to me which is the whole reason for starting the project. I am not sure if I am going to stick with the design or not right now. Maybe I will play with it a little more, but I wanted to change the design as soon as possible given the situation. Since this post only includes 7 photos. I couldn't include the most recent images. The last image was taken on February 2nd, so it is technically a little late. Next weeks will be on time.
Once again I am sorry if I let anyone else down because of my horrible mistake, I am assuming that I did let a lot of you down and I hope the you all can forgive me as well. For those of you who know me, I now you will understand that this was not something I set out to do to be evil. It was a mistake, and I am doing everything I can think of to make it right. If you would like to email me about this please do! I would love to answer any questions you might have. I hope you all can forgive me and I will continue growing as an artist and training my eyes to see things more clearly in the future.
