The Practice of Photography: Focus on CIRCLES & SPIRALS

Growth is a spiral process, doubling back on itself, reassessing and regrouping.
Julia Margaret Cameron

As I'm a little obsessed with creating mandalas from my photographs right now, I thought our August photography theme should be Circles and Spirals!

There is a symbolism in the circle that speaks to us of wholeness and inclusion, of completion and infinity.  However, this shape may mean something different to you.

We see the earth, the moon, and the sun as circles.  Look for circles and spirals in the world around you, photograph them, and think about what they symbolize for you.

Here are a few ideas: clock faces, wheels, wedding rings, coins. When you start looking for circles you will see them everywhere. The same goes for spirals - they are more intricate than circles, and many complex spirals are found in nature.

So start looking and create your own unique collection of circle and spiral images, and you can even use them to create mandalas, as you can see I did with the photo above!

Labyrinth Photo Mandala

My creative practice this morning has been spent on creating photo mandalas, and here is the result of the mandala I created out of a photograph of my backyard labyrinth.

To create this, I started with a square photograph in Photoshop.  I mirrored the photograph four times, as shown on page 98 of The Creative Photographer,  I then duplicated the layer, rotated it 90 degrees, and changed the blending mode to lighten.  I then duplicated this layer, this time rotating it 45 degrees.  For the last step, I duplicated that last layer and rotated it 90 degrees.  And there you have a mandala!

And if you want to make it circular, use the Elliptical Marqee tool.  Holding down the Shift key select the circle and drag it onto another layer.

Warning: this can be addictive!