Slow Photography in Italy

Adventures in Italy marries cultural immersion and creative exploration to provide a rich, sensuous, experience-filled journey of discovery. You unpack your bags for a week, in the city of Orvieto, giving you time to truly experience this charming place, while learning an approach to photography that will take your image-making skills to a new level. By slowing to the Italian pace, feling the rhythms of the day, you appreciate the seductiveness of the dolce vita - the sweet life!

Using Your Own Photographs in Visual Art Journals

I often use my photographs in my visual art journals. Some days they are just backdrops on which to scribble. Other days I am more conscious of each mark I make on the image. On those days I prefer my text printed, not hand written. In this image, I printed my text out on my computer and then burnished it to packing tape, left the packing tape in water for a couple of minutes, and rubbed the white paper backing off to reveal the words which remained on the tape.

listen to the voices of the stones
their wisdom is deep and ancient
they see you

You can use this method for images as well as words (you can find detailed instructions on Page 95 of The Creative Photographer)

Author and teacher Lisa Sonora recently hosted a series of daily prompts for journaling based on the theme of Roots. If you'd like to see how this photograph looked before I added to it, and find out how these stones relate to roots for me, you can read my article here on Lisa's website.

Being Present to the Beauty All Around You

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a sophisticated camera, 

if the photographs you take are far from professional. 

What matters most is that something intimate and precious 

is being brought to life and shared with another.

Jan Phillips

If your feel that you need some new inspiration for your photography, you might like to listen to Colleen Russell of Quest4Wholeness talking to me about what it is to be a Creative Photographer. In this interview I give ideas on how to take your photography to a more creative level with some practical exercises.

You can download the interview for free on Colleen's website. May you be inspired to take your camera out to play!

Creative Photographer Practice #1

Today was the first day of my Seven Practices of the Creative Photographer online course, and the time I spent creating the course was rewarded when I received a meaningful email from Emmie Chase referring me to an article she had written on her blog about Creative Photographer Practice #1.  In the article Emmie asks the question: "Why is it so hard for me to set aside time for my creative passion."  I think this is something we all wrestle with. We think we will get to doing what we love once the "have to do's" are done. I think perhaps it is time to put "JOY" at the top of our "to do" list along with "clean kitchen", "mow lawn", "feed animals". I believe feeding our Soul is as important as feeding our families. Emmie has discovered this too as you will find out when you read her article.