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.

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!

The Practice of Photography: Focus on WATER

Everywhere water is a thing of beauty, gleaming in the dewdrops; singing in the summer rain; shining in the ice-gems ...
John Ballantine

June came and went before I had time to blink, and here we are in July.  I've just returned from a couple of days of being beside Lake Bonaparte, and I was constantly mesmerized by the water.  I've come home to rain, so it felt like our July theme should be water!

Water lives in so many disguises: flowing rivers, steam, ice, rain, and beyond.  Recording the visual experience of water is an interesting challenge, as water is so much more than just a wet substance.  It is light and shadow, flow and movement, pattern and shape.  Begin viewing water more mindfully and you will see more than an expression of "wet".

To catch the movement of water use a fast shutter speed.  To slow down the movement of water so it looks like a stream of silk, put your camera on a tripod and slow down your shutter speed.  Photograph the ocean, the rain, water in a glass, water running out of a tap, children running under a garden sprinkler - see how many ways you can record the many disguises of water.

Continue this exercise into the winter months when water turns to ice and snow.

The Practice of Photography: Focus on COLOR

The whole world, as we experience it visually,
comes to us through the mystic realm of color.
Hans Hofmann

Well, it has certainly been flowering in abundance in my part of the world as spring greets us.  One of the things that I notice about spring is the color green. It is so deep and fresh and speaks to me of growth and joy.  So I decided that for May I would share the theme Color from my deck of The Creative Photographer Exploration Cards.

There is magic and mystery in colors, in the way two blues or two reds are never exactly the same. Color is a primal language with a vocabulary that speaks to our sub-conscious.

Scan your surroundings for images that contain the colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Look for hues and shades of these colors. Choose one of these colors and photograph it wherever you find it.  Perhaps you can choose a new color each week, and start your own Collection of Color.

There are vibrant colors in the natural world as well as in urban areas and man-made things. You could set up your own color still life. Combine certain colors that appeal to you. Use contrasting colors such as green and red, or harmonizing colors such as green and yellow. This will train your eye to register the background color in a photograph, something we often overlook.

And if you need some color inspiration, visit the Design Seeds website - the photographs are just wonderful and I love the color palettes!

And of course I'd love you to share your photographs on The Creative Photographer Facebook page!

iPad as Photo Art Studio

I've spent a great deal of time during the past months playing with the photo apps on my iPad as I'll be teaching a workshop on the iPad as Photo Art Studio at Art & Soul in Virginia Beach this coming week.  What fun I've had!  There are so many exciting apps out there, and they are pretty easy to use, especially compared to using Photoshop.  Most of them just need a couple of taps and your photo has become a work of art.

One of my current favorite apps for taking an ordinary photo and turning it into something that looks as though I have been working hard with a canvas and paints is Pencil Camera HD.

I love that I can look at dozens of ideas in a space of minutes and choose one that resonates with me.  As I've never taken time to learn how to sketch, being able to create sketches from my photographs is really exciting for me.  I am so grateful to the technical geniuses out there who make this possible!