70 Days of Photos (Part II)

Window Light on the Floor

Last week I gave some background on the photo a day project I began at the end of March. It’s been a fascinating journey and one I’m still pursuing. This photo, of afternoon light coming through a window onto my dining room rug, epitomizes what I learned from the “Naked Vision” class taught by Colleen Henderson: look around you. There are photographs waiting to be taken everywhere. Small everyday moments that make you catch your breath and reach for your camera shouldn’t be ignored.

Trust your instincts. There is a reason you wanted to photograph that chair, that shadow, that building. Maybe the subjects aren’t grand, but they speak to you, so don’t ignore the urge to capture the image. You don’t have to go somewhere exotic to work on your vision. Another lesson I learned: don’t be afraid of high ISO’s or feel you always need a tripod to capture an image. The opening photo was taken at a high ISO, hand held.

So here are some images I took that are some of my favorites from the workshop. Many of them capture light and shadows, shapes and stillness. A few – to my surprise – feature animals or people (not usually my strong suit). I like them all!

I’m still shooting daily, and will continue to do so until it no longer appeals to me or I feel I need a break. This weekend and next I’m taking an intensive Photoshop class (again with Colleen) from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday, so an iPhone image may have to suffice. The important thing is to keep looking and shooting.

70 Days of Photos

As most of you know, I’ve spent most of my time behind the lens capturing garden images. Loving gardens and wanting to capture them on film (and later, digitally) is what propelled me into my current profession as a photographer. And since I retired from designing gardens in late December, I’ve been delighted to continue photographing them for other designers and garden owners. In March, however, fueled by lots of non-garden photography while I was in Cuba, I enrolled in a workshop run by local fine-arts photographer and teacher Colleen Henderson that required participants to commit to taking photographs every day. For us, that amounts to a total of seventy days (the workshop ends tomorrow). Regardless of where we were, what the weather was like, whether we had a tripod or not, we agreed to pull out our cameras (DSLR, point-and-shoot, or iPhone) and capture an image (or more) to share on a private Facebook group page. There are many such “photo a day” projects – if you Google the phrase you’ll find links to many websites, Facebook pages and blogs exploring that theme. Today I’m going to share a range of photos from those I took. These are flower or garden-themed, although in fact the majority of the images I took weren’t taken in gardens. And in the next post, when I show more of the images, I’ll share what I think I learned from this exercise, which was a real eye-opener and an inspiring process.