Take a Walk on the Wild Side

Glad to see rock n roll is still alive in NYC. Sort of.

Sunflower maze

This charming maze is found in Augusta, NJ and is only around for a couple of weekends; it's interesting to be inside something so robust and ephemeral at the same time.

Don't they look like they're in a cult?

Doesn't it look like this sunflower is being strangled?

Don't you love the way these look like a proud mama and papa sunflower, beaming down on their little one?

Rules that are meant to be broken

-my pictures need someone else to like them besides me and therefore I have to frame/expose/etc in a technically proper way
-i take too many pics of my child therefore i should force myself to take pictures of other things
-it's unlikely i will ever be good at this in a way that other people appreciate therefore i should stop taking pictures of anything
-if i say i like photography people will expect something from my pictures so i should keep my hobby to myself

those are a lot of limiting beliefs but not stylistic limitations/rules... let me think about that a little bit more.

The Most Uplifting Photowalk Eve-ah

    After the terrific experience with the All America Pick Up Truck Dude, I continued my photo walk down to a serene little park.  It's a park I've visited probably 500 times in my life, from the time I was a teenager until now.  It's pretty aesthetically B-O-R-I-N-G, with a big plastic primary colors playground, a few boats, and no real flowers or landscaping to speak of.  Still, I had never wandered down there with a camera.  It was kind of hot and I'd sat out on the asphalt trying to practice panning, so I didn't have high hopes.  What I found was the most uplifting photowalk ever!

Can't you just pictures some 'tweens, defying their stereotype as valley-girl princess-culture-riddled airheads, sitting around going "How can we change the world?"  "Hey," says one, "Let's get some chalk and send some positive energy out there!"  

On my way out of the park, I found these pretty terrific messages too.  Do you think the universe wanted me to have a nice day?

Enjoy, spiritual beings!

Panning

I sat on a hot ass street corner for about an hour today trying to get the hang of panning.  While I don't think I quite had a success, I learned a lot.  I got a couple boring sedans on partially blurred backgrounds, but at least it was progress from blurred boring sedans on a blurred boring background.

The flag caught my eye and I thought if I could get the right car at the right time, I could have some kind of excellent statement about Americana, maybe I could grab a classic car or a Camero or something...

I got an all around blurry mess, but closer:

 And this priceless, priceless shot of the American Dream:

Could you love that guy more?  

Then I messed around with the shutter speed for shiggles, just to practice lining up a car with the flag. I don't think it's the last I've seen of this flag...

Lessons from the Birdhouse

     the beauty of the creative juice is that once it gets flowing, there's no end to the reserves!  After photographing a birdhouse yesterday for about an hour, I finally had to tear myself away to get the baby from daycare.  Once my "eye" was opened, I could have pulled over about 1,000 times to photograph all kinds of things - a yellow fire hydrant contrasting against the natural grasses at the beach... an 18 wheeler zooming through the tiny beach penninsula on which the daycare sits... the beautiful rock retaining walls and the boats and the windsurfers and the abandoned military structure and the and the and the... 

    Instead of hopping out everywhere, I did a lot of thinking about the images I wanted to capture as I drove the length of the beach, especially how I could compose them and why I was drawn to them.  And like the birdhouse, I came to realize - it's not the precise visual representation of what I'm seeing that draws me to photography.  Further, it's my attempt to precisely capture what I see that frustrates me.  I can take a picture of a fire hydrant and beach grasses - and it would leave me flat, even though it's exactly what I saw.

     But if I were to compose the picture so that the weathered yellow paint and bright green grasses took over the frame, or put the hydrant on the right or left side, or blurred the hydrant and focused on the awesome fence behind it... I'd be looking at a photograph that moves me and captures the elements that drew me in - the contrast, the idiosyncrasy of a man made object on the natural beach.  

     For me, the goal of photography is no longer to capture what I see - it's to communicate the elements of the scene that attracted me, to find a way to evoke the feeling of the person behind the camera. That is probably obvious to everyone else.  The weathered shingles on the beach homes lining a charming block, rather than the cluttered entire block.  The end of the 18 wheeler as it zooms out of the frame, which is otherwise filled with natural, stationary elements.  The planter, not necessarily the plant all the time.  

     Thanks to Kat Eye and to the BetterPhoto courses I was taking this last month, the world of photography is finally open to me, and finally realizing that the person behind the camera actually counts... I can't wait to get out there and capture the world.

intimacy with a birdhouse

     I feel like I had sex with this birdhouse.  I now know it from every single angle and I'll never look at it the same way again.  Today I decided to have a "familiar subject" redo with a something that doesn't move, and I've been courting this little birdhouse from afar for a couple weeks, since I started the Kat Eye course. Here was my funny little romp in the yard.

Well, that's a scene that turns out to be more complicated through the lens than it was from the window.  Phone wire, too many objects on the bench.  From what I'm learning, I took out some clutter to simplify.

 But it still wasn't enough.  

Now the cheese stands alone.  Rule of thirds alone couldn't help me, though.

Tried a different angle... hmm.  Meh.

Getting more intimate... now we're getting somewhere.

Even closer.... Took about 100 of these.  

Let's look at it from a different angle - I usually get "stuck" or caught up in one angle, like with the little rocking chair.  It took this assignment to remind me to stand up or lie down or SOMETHING.

Which of course drew me into the bench...

Which to me turned out to be as interesting as the birdhouse.  There's that wood/texture thing cropping up again.

And while I was over there, surprise! Look at that cute miniature log pile and those nice bench lines.

Let's try a totally different angle.. now I'm lying down in the dirt and another surprise through the lens- a lovely late afternoon light through the trees, that really evokes the feeling of this little corner of the world.

After all of that, in the end it wasn't the bench, the house on the bench, the whole scene, or any other elements that really evoke the feeling I felt when I looked out the window at the little house. It was this tiny detail that I fell in love with, and when I look at it, I feel serene and drawn to go outside and sit on the bench:

There were so many surprises on this multi-angle journey... One new angle leading to a new detail which led to another and another... I loved it!

Common threads

I need help!  There are a few common threads and a few seriously uncommon threads among the photos in my inspiration file.

http://pinterest.com/jjinqueens/inspiration-file-mine/

Subjects:  Delilah, obviously.


Natural elements, not quite as obviously, but they keep sneaking in.  It seems wood especially keeps sneaking into the backgrounds - the wooden fence(s!), the tree stump.

Light: I haven't really figured out light yet.  It baffles me - finding it, using it, exposing properly.  In fact, I often think I've got it just right and then end up with a disaster - like using even shade, and finding all my photos look flat.  On the flip side, sometimes I have really happy mistakes, like the dappled sun in the picture above, or the lack of light and grey appearance of this photo, which is a big mistake but I love:

Composition: I lean toward wide aperture in the photos that I love, and although the ones that honor the rule of thirds are the most pleasing, I lean toward the right side of the frame.

Elements of Design: I like weird color too, I think -  the ones that come out amber, or techicolor in appearance - although I also love very natural, warm tones like the warm woods and stones.  Natural textures are very appealing to me - there is a lot of wood and stone in my inspiration file.  


Message and emotion.... I gravitate toward the pictures of my daughter that do NOT reflect a giggly toddler - the ones where she is staring straight down the lens, or conveying something intense in appearance.  I notice that no pictures of relationships showed up in my inspiration file except one very close up shot of my gram and my daughter's hands.

When looking at my little collage there, I also don't feel really overwhelmed with love the group together.  Maybe because they are small, they are less impactful, or maybe I need to get some more skills!

I think the common elements that inspired me the most were the textures - the curb, the tree, the branches against the sunflare, the wooden highchair, the stone bench, the brick wall.  When I am out with the camera seeking prey, I am drawn to wooden benches, grass, stones, piles of seashells... natural, 3D elements that you can feel when you look at them.

I also think I am most struck by photos I take with a wide aperture, or that are very close up, that may give the viewer a closer, unexpected look at something they might otherwise walk by (e.g. a tiny portaluca).  Maybe I'm rooting for the visual underdog!