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.

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.