Banishing "The Box" ~ Floral Friday!

"Whirligigs"

(1/8 sec.@ F/16, ISO 100, 50mm fl, overcast morning light, handheld)

I had to banish the blahs. You all know the blahs... when that creative muse doesn't show up, when inspiration and creativity elope to some far off destination without warning. When you'd rather let your kids challenge you to the 57th round of Mario Karts instead of pick up the camera or editing. Nothing piques your interest, nothing seems brilliant enough, and every idea feels like it's been done before so why bother?

And I'd had a great week don't get me wrong. And I DID want to shoot something, the urge was waaaay deep down inside though. Then I remembered a little lesson I learned years ago. I was very focused on painting and sculpture but nothing seemed satisfactory. I'd labour days, weeks, months over something to get it exact but was always left wanting. It was enough to make me want to abandon art completely. Then an instructor on exchange from Europe noticed my struggle in class and asked me why everything had to be perfect. I couldn't answer. Why DID everything have to be perfect? Next thing I knew, he'd prepped my workspace with the sloppiest materials I'd ever seen together on one table with some plaster and said "Don't think anymore. Just create something delightful - for you."

Needless to say, when I abandoned myself to just enjoying the process I wound up creating an entire series of sculptures that even sold at the local art show before I could get them all out on the table for display. Banishing the pressure to accomplish the perfect piece gave me freedom to just enjoy being an artist. To break out of the box I'd put myself in. The blahs always seem to come in a box. Ever notice that.

I marched myself out to the front lawn yesterday determined to keep the blahs in the box and looked at my front garden. It occurred to me again that I haven't done enough artistic photography lately, that I needed to banish the typical approach to photographing the garden and just shoot with abandon and see what I end up with that delights just me. Just because. So I did!

The image above is one of a series I think I'm going to post - just because I truly enjoyed the process. I love the colors so vibrant and fresh after the rain we finally got. And because cone flowers are so stiff and sturdy looking I thought I'd do something fun to them, make them move or dance or twirl. So, I dialed in an exposure that would give me a slower shutter and give me ample time to move the camera around.  At times I knelt down and zoomed up into them, hovered way up over them and swung the camera back and forth across them, and for this morning's post I arched the camera from one side to the other almost in a circle. I immediately was personally delighted with this one... the composition is good (merely by chance, these don't always work, it's hit and miss... but soooo fun) and the speed at which I twirled the camera was just enough so you still have context.

And voila! Enjoying the process meant I could banish "the box". The muse eagerly returned, inspiration and creativity grovelled at the door asking for forgiveness, and my addiction to the Wii, banished. We spend a lot of time figuring out what our cameras can do for us - but have we spent enough time figuring out what we can really do with our cameras?

Thought outside the box lately? Need to banish it? Get out there and play. My playing wasn't anything spectacular... it simply brought me joy. Thanks for the ramble today folks, get out there this long weekend and express your joy while banishing "the box".

On the Breeze ~ Exploration Thursday!

"And Then They Danced"

No, I haven't suddenly forgotten how to get a sharp photograph. Today's post is a stand of wildflowers waving in the breeze along a trail two evenings ago. Now some of you may have no use for this type of artistic imagery. Nothing was blurred in processing either. This shot is SOOC. (straight out of camera) My goal was to still have enough detail to see the flower shapes, but to catch the motion of them swaying slightly. And try as I might, they're too sturdy a plant to actually bend and sway, so catching them "dancing" on the breeze was more like it. I think I might have this one done on canvas when printed.

There's something about soft light, soft shapes, and a slow exposure that can turn nature into abstract art or visual poetry. A windy day can offer the photographer a chance to photograph outside the box, choose to be creative, and forget the rules we so often adhere to religiously. Who says every subject has to be frozen in time?

I've been a long time fan of Freeman Patterson's photography. He listens and looks for nature to direct how he can most accurately and beautifully portray it in the lens. His images of lupins or wildflowers dancing in the wind are in a word delightful. When I need inspiration or feel myself getting bogged down with literal accuracy as I photograph, I open one of his books (all of which will be life changing/photographically changing reads) and allow the images to remind me that nature should be enjoyed and that it's many faces can be caught in the camera if you loosen up and enjoy yourself.

Next week it's my hope to have another artist/photographer join us on the blog for Exploration Thursday. You'll want to stop in for that post! In the meantime, channel your inner artist, take a cue from nature, and explore what you can create in the lens.

Thanks for the ramble, have a most awesome day!

Rushing Water ~ Mono Monday!

"Rain Runnin' Fast"

(1/6 sec.@ F/20, ISO 100, 46mm fl, Center Weighted Meter)

(sunset, tripod, circular polarizer)

Armed with a tripod, a remote shutter release, and a polarizer to filter out the excess light that comes with slower shutter speeds, I begin to hunt out the area waterfalls once again. May is truly ideal for this as we're inundated with rain from April, and Hamilton is known as the Waterfall Capitol of the World after all!

I love the challenge of photographing moving water. The trap however, is getting so caught up with the technical, that a true composition is neglected. Or we opt for any moving water that might look silky and smooth in the lens without any thought to why we're drawn to it, and how to express it as a photograph of substance.

Today's B&W is my balance of the two; the mechanics of the shot, and my objective in photographing it. The first thing I was careful of was to find an element of design I could capitalize on, not just a pretty run of water. I walked around this particular juncture in the creek bed several times before I decided how much my eye kept coming back to the smooth line that arched around the creek, giving a horseshoe shape containing the water surging down over it. I also liked the automatic contrast of silk and surging water swirling a step below it. Exposed right, there would be a contrast of light and dark within both areas of the shot. Creates interest.

I kept my wide angle zoom on so as to include the entire rounded layer of rushing water too. Always remember your focal length (zoomed in to 46mm for this shot) helps determine what you do with your final composition, and where you'll shoot from obviously. I waited for the sun to bathe the swirling part of the water over the edge of the bank to add golden light for my color shots and to meter from that so I wouldn't blow out any necessary highlights. And I knew I'd need everything in the shot that was still, to be sharp throughout, plus use my choice of aperture to help give me a longer exposure than normal so the water would look appropriately smooth in the right spots. I ended up with a shutter speed of 1/6th of a second that gave me the look I desired. The rushing turbulent motion is still very defined in spots, and the smooth water running over the layer of rock bed is equally defined.

I'm very happy with this shot. I could have easily stopped down my aperture more to allow for an even longer shutter speed and made the entire shot very very soft. But that was not my goal this time around, and at times, that approach can be very cliche. In editing after I converted to B&W, all this required was to tidy the crop a bit and pull contrast out of the shadows and highlights with PSPx3's Clarify action at only 8.6%. I'm noticing the more carefully I expose in the camera, the less is needed in editing. Maybe an obvious thing, but I use it as a way to judge if my skills are being honed any. High Pass Sharpen was applied at a subtle opacity adding a bit of extra depth.

Thanks for the ramble on my waterfall trails exploits. There will be many more to come. If you haven't walked or biked the Red Hill Creek trails, they're beginning to look quite lush right now... great place for your family and your cameras!