Jumping

I feel like I've jumped, or perhaps fallen into the 21st century. I'm posting this from my new phone which seems to do nearly as much as my laptop computer can do. The thing is, I love it. No complaints about what the world's coming to. Just amazement and fascination and a little sense of euphoria.

I still don't know of I'll keep up with this blog but since I seem to get most of my ideas for writing when I'm away from my computer maybe this is the answer. Now I just need to figure out how to load photos from here.

Spider Web or Black Hole?

We're experiencing technical difficulties. That's the theme of the week for my photos. Some equipment problems (I still need to clean that sensor), some physical problems (my wrist tendinitis is acting up), I have a mountain of less-fun tasks that have to happen (paperwork & framing are just two) and there's always the time issue (just not enough of it, even when I forgo food, sleep & bathroom breaks).

But even with these challenges, I'm having tremendous fun with it all right now. Everything I see around me seems to either hold potential for a cool photo, or connects to someone else's art or poetry, or inspires ideas for new projects. At night I've been having dreams that I want to translate into photos. I've been listening to music that I want to portray visually. 

I'm finding that connection aspect so powerful right now. The kind of photography I play with, what I call abstracted reality, can be viewed and thought about on different levels. This is a spider web (found in an olive tree on a hillside in Spain).



Or is it a hurricane or perhaps a cosmic black hole. And really, from the moment I first saw it, mostly it was that metaphoric, symbolic black hole of the unknown and the scary places in my mind. In the past year, photography has felt much closer to poetry than it has to "picture making".




Uncovering and exposing my feelings and thoughts through the pictures has no limits other than the ones I impose (how visible do I really want to be)? And in the process of exploring and showing my own inside, I might touch someone else's inner thoughts and feelings as well. That's pretty cool. 

Not always a photo but always a picture

I didn't take any photos the past week.  I think this is the longest stretch I've gone in two years. I wonder about the reasons -- my camera needs some serious cleaning, I've been busy with the changing routines of the fall season, and I'm still working on edits from summer photos so know that anything I take today won't get looked at for awhile. 

When I woke up this morning, I spent almost half an hour looking out of my favorite window. It's a small,  4 X 4 foot square window high under the roof line that frames branches of a maple tree. All year long that view changes,  but is always beautiful. A year and a half ago I woke up on an April morning to find my budding branches covered in snow. Fortunately, that day I had my camera next to me and didn't have to get out of bed to get this one:



Today, I noticed the first red/orange of the fall change. In my mind, I took a picture of those branches, tilting my head slightly so that the largest branch was placed more on the diagonal. When I finally had the colors, lines and light arranged the way I wanted, I was happy and ready to get on with my day. 

I've done this my entire life -- framed little scenes ... compositions... in ways that feel good, that make me happy. The experience of moving my head or body to make what I see feel better is like breathing. Sometimes I do a version of this while I'm driving with the lines on the road. I've scared myself on a couple of occassions when I realized getting the picture right had taken precedence over my attention to driving and I had to shake myself out it. I no longer let myself go quite so deep while driving. 

It was quite enlightening  and amazing to discover recently that not everyone does this constantlly. It's difficult for me  to grasp this isn't a universal human trait since it's such a deeply ingrained, unconscious act for me to find the pictures and patterns in everything. I wonder what things other people do unconscously that might be completely foreign to me...

So even though I haven't taken any photos this week, I've still made pictures. I always will.

Swimming Through Life Like a Jellyfish

Sometimes photography for me is about getting lost in the moment and the subject more than the final product. In fact, it often is. Process not product is infinitely more satisfying usually.

I found myself staring at a tank of jellyfish this afternoon at a small natural history museum on Cape Cod. I was captivated and mesmerized. It was very low light and they were moving constantly so I didn't get a lot of good photos. But I did get a moment of peace where everything in my life dissolved away. I imagined what it would be like to move like this and decided I would try to move through life a little more like a jellyfish for awhile.

The Metal Water Connection

Sometimes it's easier to show than to tell.
I've been enjoying the visual connections between metal and water.
The flow, the color, the reflection.

1. day 8: curving back home, 2. water flow, 3. day 8: metal flow, 4. day 6: water ribbon, 5. metal water, 6. looking over, 7. subway scratches, 8. noiseyblurlightline 1, 9. day 6: water blobs, 10. more water, 11. day 8: first look, 12. winter falls, 13. arc reflected

Seeing Well

My first camera was a Pentax K1000 35mm SLR -- the camera so many of us first used to explore f stops and asa's and shutter speeds. I had a small dark room. I had lots of desire to capture what I'd always been seeing. But I never really stuck with it long enough to get anywhere and by my 20's no longer owned a camera anymore. Over the years, I did some painting and drawing, took some design classes and discovered little ways to keep discovering and making art. But it wasn't until 2006 that I once again owned a camera, this time a small digital point and shoot, that I carried everywhere for a year.

That year, I learned that being a photographer is more about seeing well than it is having good equipment. After a year of using a point and shoot, I was convinced that quality equipment is essential to take the photos to another level. Yet the best equipment in the universe won't help if you can't see well in the first place.

By seeing well, I mean an ability to compose the photo elements and to identify the colors, textures, forms, light, focus, and depth of field that highlight the "message" of the photo. Even with a simple point and shoot I was able to use those variables to help create satisfying photos (the textile shot I posted in my last entry was taken with that point and shoot).

In 2007, I got my beloved Nikon D80 with an 18 - 55 mm lens. All of sudden, my world opened up as I was able to exert more control over the photographic elements. The biggest change was ease in changing the Depth of Field which allowed me to decide what I wanted the viewer to focus their eye on. The 18 - 55 mm lens is versatile and I could move from relatively wide angle landscape to tighter close-ups. Though not technically a "macro" lens, I was able to get fairly tight on a subject and would sometimes crop photos to bring it closer.

I still had a hunger though to really go deep inside things visually. So this year I got the Nikkor 105mm VR macro lens. I am finally able to take photos like I see them in my head! I will have to spend more time in another entry talking about what it feels like to photograph with this lens, but I can say it feels like going home.

The downside, the burden, of this equipment is the maintenance, the cost, the lugging, the technical expertise (which reminds me I'll talk about the joys and pains of Photoshop some other time!)There's a learning curve I feel like I'm just beginning to tackle (undoubtedly related to the dream I had about cleaning dirty sensors featured in my first entry).

I'm aware that there are newer, better, faster, pricier, better-featured cameras and equipment out there and someday I'll upgrade. But for now this set of camera and lens is serving me well. And we've all seen photos from folks that have that better, faster, fancier equipment yet they're just not good photos because it all starts with the eye.

Finding Inspiration

There are two things that are sure to inspire me as a photographer: travel and viewing the work of other photographers.

I am constantly amazed and delighted by photos from my contacts at flickr. The best part of the flickr experience is the cross-fertilization that happens, the visual connections that are made, the thrill when someone sees the world similarly or very differently! I have come to know so many great photographers there.

To give you a taste of these visual connections I'll share an example from one of my oldest contacts. I first came across Mark Willocks' photos my first month on flickr. One of the first images I saw of his: Outside Looking In was of stone canyon walls that reminded me very much compositionally of one of my soft flowing textile shot. It made a surprising visual connection (that overlapping view has been repeated with Mark many times since with water, reflections, architecture, plants and flowers).

Here's a link to the work of other Flickr artists that I find inspiring and wonderful: Sue (Light~Shape~Color)'s Favorites on Flickriver

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The other reliable source of inspiration for me is traveling. My eyes are opened up by the fresh views all around me. Even things I might see in my own backyard take on a new look as I'm more aware of everything around me.

The world as I saw it in July was full of light, shape & color as I spent almost two weeks traveling in Northern Spain and Southern France. When traveling I try to take a few "snapshots" to remember the experience, but most of what I return with are abstracts and landscapes inspired by the colors and feel of a new place.

A collection of photos from my July trip:

1. day 8: first look, 2. day 7: arriving in Bilbao, 3. day 7: love the walls here, 4. day 6: water ribbon, 5. day 3: color and lines, 6. day 4: Barcelona color, 7. day 7: we're watching you, 8. day 3: Gaudi curves, 9. day 6: strange expo building, 10. day 4: music at moonlight, 11. day 3: aged curves, 12. day 6: ready to move on, 13. day 4: still looking for color, 14. day 1: airport lines, 15. day 5: slice of light, 16. day 8: metal flow, 17. day 7: constructing lines, 18. day 3: color and curves, 19. day 7: leaving, 20. day 8: curving back home, 21. day 7: constructing water, 22. day 8: turning the corner on summer, 23. day 7: drinking in Bilbao, 24. day 4: climbing Gaudi, 25. day 9: looking for inspiration