Dancing Tulips ~ Experimental Thursdays!

"Beauty When They Sway"

(5.sec @ F/8, ISO 100, zoom back to 110mm fl, 55-200mm zoom lens, spot metering)

Our image today is a result of a floral shoot I did over the weekend. I was feeling poetic, creative, artistic. And bored. Yup, you heard me. Things felt stale, photographically speaking. If novelists get writer's block, I guess photographers get ... camera block?

Meeting deadlines, having routines, and setting personal goals can be great, till they begin to stifle your passion and your delight with what you love doing. Creative types especially fall prey to this. If we're not careful, the practical takes over and we lose inspiration to keep exploring. Especially if what we love pursuing is also our full time vocation.

Was making great progress on learning some new lighting, which angles and POV's worked best, and looked beautiful with the tulips I'd set up on the seamless. But flicking back through the camera to see the contents I'd created, everything looked elegant but stiff. Dare I say it... boring. Ugh. Not one spontaneous image amongst them. I was so used to being in work mode that my playful side had disappeared.

So, I placed the tripod close, dimmed the lighting a little and using a long exposure and anchored camera, I began zooming in and out of the frame with my telephoto zoom. When you do this as the camera is still taking the shot, you get a blur effect. Results are fairly spontaneous, you'll always find a rather abstract yet delightful surprise lurking in your collection of shots. And it was fun. I personally love abstract art, especially work based on nature itself. I chose this one to show, because the initial subjects are still fairly sharp considering what I was doing with the lens, and a very subtle wash of color fills the background. Later I applied a bit of a displacement layer in PSPx3 to create an artistic 3D shaping to the front subjects. It adds a soft definition. What do you think? All I know is that I spent just as much time playing with my camera as I had being serious, and the change felt good.

Don't forget your initial passion for what you love. When it shines, you feel motivated and rejuvenated. Throw your reserve out the window and play. Your photography will thank you for it.

Thanks for letting me ramble, have a good day exploring what you love!