Problem solving in the DreamWorld

Problem solving in the DreamWorld

Little known fact, sometimes when I am dreaming, I know I am dreaming.

For so long now I have been trying to become lucid in my dreams, and I am getting there, though more often than not, the excitment of it all causes me to wake up. To get this far has taken almost 2 years of meditation, determination and sometimes frustration. I have kept a regular dream journal for so long now, and my dream recall is impressive, I am able to trace my dreams almost to the point of them forming right before my very eyes.

But rhis is not a post about lucid dreaming, thats for another forum entirely, no, this post is more about problem solving in the dreamworld, and how this plays out in the real world.

I very often dream about work, sometimes it was me dealing with awkward people, sometimes even more mind numbingly boring than that, like quality control processing... never mind, I know what I mean

I completely redesigned my website after seeing it form in front of me during one hypnogogic state, even that rotating rainbow banner and lettering, all came to me in a dream.

So it may come as no surprise that I dream about photography, specially when I am on a mission, and recently I have been immersing myself in youtube videos by the likes of Jason Lanier, Tony Corbell and the likes, partly for inspiration, party for their wisdom, the latter is very knowledgable in the subject of lighting. I have even left the laptop running an extended webinar on the subject a few times while I have fallen asleep.

And now I am dreaming about lighting, not only that, but problem solving too, trying things out which were bigging me.

For some people, dreams are a mystery, not to me, not anymore. I knwo that if there is something I need to nail down, I can run through it all in my dreams like a practice run, and dreams being what dreams are, merely a string of events bought on by expectation, give us the perfect playing field to practice in, you want the perfect sunset to practice with, it happens, its there! And the scenario can change as you progress through the dream.

The weird thing is, I mention this to friends and they are all baffled by it, yet strangely enough, my father actually does this a lot too, though he often forgets the dreams, subconsciously he has the problem fixed, so he tells me... I was flabberghasted to say the least.

My dream recall allows me to remember most of what I dream about, including the mundane problem solving, including the speedlighting, because the other night I dreamed almost exactly what occured yesterday, which was pretty spooky in a way, but probably not, seeing as I go to the coast a heck of a lot, but everything fell into place yesterday and I barely even thought about what I was doing, I mean, of course I was concentrating but I wasn't like, oh **** I'm shooting off camera flash again, I hope their not all rubbish images...

In other words, I felt relaxed taking the images like I usually do, I am never stressed out when I am out with my camera.

I gingerly recall Tony Corbell saying that you should work with one light at a time.

One Light At A Time.

This sentance was echoing around my dream-mind so much recently, but in the real world I have added a second light, be it for backlighting hair, highlighting shadows etc. I know strictly speaking that I am working with more than one light, but I always begin with one light, and usually end up using two, the second light to merely compliment the first.

Though I only have two speedlights at the moment, I do have two interfit ex150 heads which can and most likely will be used at home more often than they already are, but out on the street, I know that two lights probably wont be enough for portrait work, two lights are fine for small subjects like shrooms and flowers, I was out yesterday shooting shrooms again, two speedlights, I could have just used a reflector but I didnt have one available at the time, not even a makeshift one, but I know have a sheet of tinfoil folded up in the Billingham for such energencies, because for smaller subjects like shrooms I would rather use just the one light and bounced light, easier to work with and it saves energy.

Now I am not saying that I have learned everything from dreaming in my bed, far from it, but I guess without these dreams I would probably still be struggling to understand inverse square laws and lighting ratio's, neither of which made any sense when I watched something on the subject recently, half asleep... It was only when I became fully asleep did my subconscious mind process it all without any external interferences.