Recognizing Inspiration

    As a board certified behavior analyst, today's photojournal prompt is particularly exciting.  What Kat has presented us with is called a task analysis - a breakdown of a more complex skill, like tying shoes or.. making a photograph.  It clicks with my brain's scientific way of thinking.
     When I am at work or trying to figure out my next steps in life, small or big, I always come back to a concept I learned from a marcus buckingham podcast - strengths and weaknesses.  He conceptualizes strengths as things you are good at, yes, but also - ready for it? - things that strengthen you.  He says that things you are good at, but hate, are not actually strengths, but weaknesses.  And worse, because you're good at them, people keep throwing them at you.  I am an excellent interviewer but I hate it - but I get assigned most of the interviews, during which I am just dreaming about being somewhere else.  I am also an excellent materials-maker, and while I am laminating, creating visual supports, etc, time just flies by. I'd do it even if I didn't get paid.  It's a thrill.
    That's what we're looking at here, as well - our strengths and weaknesses in the photographic process.  (PS - something you suck at but love to do is neither a strength or weakness - it's a hobby, lol).
   
     My strengths in the photographic process are: -seeing a subject - since I had my little epiphany, I can sharply identify what exactly it is I wanted to photograph, what about that subject, and am beginning to conceptualize how I want to present that to a viewer. -I love most of the exploration except when technicalities get in the way.  -Review is a thrill, and less and less a surprise (as in, oh, I thought that would be great and it was awful kind of surprise).  -I love sharing with others and receiving feedback.

    My weaknesses are: -Editing is boring.  I also don't have proper editing software, and further, my ultimate goal is for the photographs to require little editing to begin with.  I'm not yet into the editing-as-creative-process part - probably because I haven't been exposed and I don't imagine I'll ever have time for it.  -I never get an end result although putting photos up on the blog is often disappointing because out of their context in my photostream, they're often not as exciting as I thought.  I also find the cropping or color or something about a printed product to be very disappointing when I get them back.  I don't think printing processes have caught up with the digital aspect ratio or something.

     One area of frustration I continue to come up against is lack of equipment to do what I want to do - e.g., my girlfriend would like me to take her new portraits in exchange for providing interior design for my cottage. I want to agree, but I don't have a good portrait lens, reflectors, or the skill to get good SOOTC shots, or any training regarding posing and making people look good - even though it's one of my motivations.

    One area that I see I get jazzed up about over and over is exploring the subject - and letting it reval itself.

   


  a. Intention to photograph b. Seeing a subject c. Exploring/studying a subject with your camera d. Review of your images e. Editing of your images f. Getting an end result – on the wall, on the web, etc. g. Understanding your images h. Sharing with others i. Receiving feedback

Unfamiliar Subject - Photojournal

    When the last lesson from the 4-week Kat Eye: Journey of Recognition course arrived in my mailbox, I could hardly believe it.  Life, the universe, and bad lighting seriously impaired my ability to keep up with this class, and I have been blessed with amazing "virtual" classmates that have formed a real, vibrant online community and classroom.  I hope someday Kat will sponsor a retreat and we will all get away together with our cameras and our array of personalities.  I also hope it will be in Oregon, because 1) I've always wanted to go there and 2) I think I want a tattoo from this place in Oregon that I can't remember the name of.

    The silver lining is that we have another course coming up almost immediately, the Journey of Inspiration.  So, I have hope.

    However, I don't think it was ONLY my life that got in the way  -  it was my self too.  I think I intimidated myself, set my expectations too high, had a few amazing breakthroughs and experiences in Starting the Journey, and got fearful and too expectant.

     So today I kicked everyone out of the house, didn't bother about the fact that the lighting is subpar, and decided to tackle photographing an unfamiliar object, from a couple weeks back.  I usually lean towards my daughter, or natural backgrounds like wood, and shooting outdoors, so I figured I would try some depression glass that I needed to photograph anyhoo.

     

     During the exercise (photos are here), I started out frustrated because I just wanted to capture this little glass, and 1) the light bites, 2) I couldn't get an uncluttered background 3) my camera is notorious for a lot of noise at high ISOs, 4) my husband took my todder AND my tripod, argh.  I wasn't interested in this, and then I put the little glass on the wooden bench and added some mirrors to try to capture more natural light.  Still boring. I added a different piece (with branches, of course) and got more into it - there was some texture, and interest, and something in the glass jar spoke to me.  Then I came around the corner, like Kat trained us to do, and there was the little jar, looking at itself.  In that angle, time got lost, things came together, and the little vignette in the previous post was born.

     Joke's on me: I ended up using the natural element as a backdrop, of course, and sticking with the wide aperture, of course.. but I tried, I opened up the creative gates again, and I'd still like to try sports or architecture, but once again, can't let perfect get in the way of good. I think that the challenges of light and glass, which fades into many backgrounds, made this a challenge for me.  Regardless, I feel very emotional about the results.  There was something very touching to me about objects examining themselves in the mirror, about the branches reaching out of the tiny jar, about the tiny old webs hanging off the branches, and finally, the brilliance and transcendence of the light on the glass and mirror.  The whole process gave me some hope about our situation and my mental state right now.

Unfamiliar subject- the pics

Dual Identity

Escape

Haunted

shine

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.

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!

Familiar Subject

This exercise was to pick your favorite subject and take 50 photos.  Unfortunately, my subject moves around a lot and I experienced a ton of technical difficulties, rendering a lot of what would be my favorite shots very blurry or unusable.  This is my ongoing problem - the will is strong, the mind is weak, lol.

Here are a few gems; I think I am going to do a take 2 though.

Creating an Inspiration File

     For Kat Eye's photo course, Finding your Eye, we've been asked to create an Inspiration File of all our favorite images - one of our own images, and one of others' images.  I used Pintrest, at the suggestion of another classmate, to create a board of my own favorite images from the last 3 months.  The process of selecting my favorite images was not easy - I feel they are scattered with no unifying theme except my daughter is in most of them, of course.

Do you see anything in terms of theme, color, texture, subject?  Help a girl out!

Inspiration File


I found the process interesting and frustrating; although I've just embarked on a photography journey about a year ago, I don't feel my images are up to par or where I want them to be.  I also don't edit or have any kind of editing software such as photoshop, which might help me - I use the small tweaks included in iPhoto, such as cropping or basic exposure adjustment.

I lok forward to this file evolving over time!

Internal Reason #3: Relationships

     One of the sweetest things in my recent life is the relationship between my husband and daughter - also between my parents and daughter, my husband and myself, and in the many home programs I work in, witnessing the playful love between parents and children.  I often which I had a camera strapped to my head to capture the moments that show these beautiful relationships.  It is a rush to me to capture these fleeting moments, and it plays into my external motivation as well, of making mommies and daddies happy.

Love for mommies to their babies...

Grandma kisses...

                                 Beaming papa....

sweet moments at christmas...

 First glimpse of santa, and dad's comforting words...

Loving grandma...

Special times with grandma...

Big girl pushing bike with GG...

Sharing mommy's hobby...

INTERNAL reason #1: COLOR

    I have a love affair with color - I can spend days sitting and looking at paint chips.  My first act when we move is to put paint on the walls - paint with COLOR!  My favorite camera setting is VIVID - or, black and white.
these are some of my favorite images, whether properly composed or not, I love the colors.  When I lay eyes on a scene, photograph, any visual imagery, the first thing that hits me is the color, the relationship between colors.  I love bright contrasting colors, rich edible colors like these apples, soft romantic colors... dissonant color and harmonizing color.

apples at market, nikon coolpix

sky in motion from car, canon something. i borrowed it.

Patient husband, waiting for me to get the shot. Nikon D3000

a watchful dad, d3000, vivid mode

glamor girl, d3000, vivid mode

bright spot, d3000, vivid mode

biscuit on the curb, standard color, d3000