top of page

Tracy's Story

areneedowns

Green Auto 

By Tracy Watts



The instructor said to each of us… do not ever use “green auto.” Hmmm. Seemed a simple enough statement. It was a beginning digital photography class at The Light Factory in Charlotte NC in July of 2015. I did not imagine at that time how such a simple statement could profoundly alter the journey ahead. 


I had owned a camera much of my life. I had some extra time that summer. Photography was going digital. I signed up. 


If you have ever used what some might call a “real camera,” there is a dial on the top left of your camera. For the casual user, it offers a variety of settings… sports, landscape, night time, and, yes, one of the settings is simply “auto” short for automatic and it is typically printed in green. If you want to put your camera on auto pilot… that is your setting!


That day, the instructor said… do not ever put your camera on green auto. Use only manual settings, carry your camera everywhere you go. Figure it out. Learn it.


I did what I was told. 


I was in fact in some ways living on autopilot more broadly… but change was coming. 


My father, with whom I had a complicated relationship, had just passed. He was a military, corporate man who love Greek philosophy… Among the many paradigms, the Greeks imparted on our world was the idea of the universe as a series of warring binaries. Gods and Goddesses. Light vs. Dark, Good vs. Evil, War vs. Peace, Male vs. Female and so many  more. I was raised in this paradigm of warring binaries. 

Was I going to heaven or hell? 

Was I a good or bad girl? 

What were the cultural expectations of me vs. those for my brother…

Just a series of questions that lingered on into adulthood.


I was cracking open. I had for most of my life held dissonance and tension in my being. I had swallowed it to just be in the day to day mode of life, work, family. But now the tensions of heart, trust, and vulnerability were rippling out to issues of faith, equity, justice, and community. It all rising within me… my heart ached; my head hurt. 


Before the Greek empire, there were people who saw the world more holistically. Circles. This truth and vision came to me. Friends, theologians, books… coming from all angles and intersections.

Darkness is not “bad”... it is sacred.

It is human to have a shadow side.

Yes, you can embrace all of who you are.

The scars can be doors, windows.


By discarding green auto, I slowed down to consider any number of variables…. 


Where is the light? 

What do I see?  

What do I want to create?


Frame by frame I literally began to see the world differently. And that doesn’t speak to considering what I saw in the frames once I was home… slowing down. Being intentional.


Science tells us that often people see what they want. 

What they have already decided is true. 

Photography, art, slowing down stripped me of my auto pilot, my assumptions, and the banal comfort that veiled my life.

Recent Posts

See All

Comentarios


bottom of page