I was on the verge of taking a day off on account of tired – my new shift at work goes from 6:30am to 3:30, and the adjustment on my internal body clock has been a challenging one to accommodate. However, I remembered a quick post I wanted to make to share with everyone a great eBook I had the pleasure of previewing from the crew working with David DuChemin. So, now is as good a time as any! Continue reading “Close to Home – from Craft and Vision”
Tag: inspiration
The Grain in Your Own Wood
There’s a great inspirational booklet called “Bits and Pieces” which issues a short magazine every month, giving you little nuggets of wisdom from past and present notables, stories and parables to inspire, and everything in between. On reading one of my recent issues, I came across a great quote from Howard Thurman, a Clergyman of the 1900’s. His quote: Continue reading “The Grain in Your Own Wood”
An exercise in silence…
As creatives, we often can find ourselves just not seeing anything new…even if given a theme to go out and discover. In times like these, it’s sometimes beneficial to stop looking outward and start looking inward. I am not talking about Yoga, meditation, or even pontificating the meaning of life. Although these are equally viable options for getting out of a creative rut, I am talking about looking at your own past work. While we all have done this from time to time, I found a recent little twist on this practice helpful. Look back at your work with a theme in mind.
The monthly contests here encourage everyone to go out and capture new work with a theme in mind, and creating new work is always a good thing, but sometimes, when given a theme, and then looking back at archives, you can find new meaning in older images, when looking with a different perspective.
For instance – I was reading an article over on Nikon (yes, I read Nikon’s website – we all know it’s the photographer and not the gear by now, right?) about the value of sounds. The article was talking about pet photography and that you can get certain expressions if you catch the right sound (full article here:). It got me to thinking – what would the lack of sound look like in an image? So, I decided to close my eyes and try to imagine what a photo of silence would encompass: the serenity of a flower, the peace of a beach or the darkness of an evening or morning sunrise or sunset when it’s just you and the landscapes, even the chill of the day with snow covering everything in a blanket of quiet.
It gave me such a burst of inspiration from my own archives that I decided to go through and pick these specific ones out with the idea of “silence” in mind… Of course I couldn’t just leave something like this alone – so I added a little taste of music that I thought would be appropriate:
This is, of course, just my own interpretation. What are your thoughts when you think of a series of images that captures “silence”? Would you set it to music? How many images would you include? Here I had 8 images…was it too many or not enough? Sound off in the comments, as it’s really the viewer thoughts and input that is always so valuable!
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News, Artists, and Inspiration
Welcome to the show notes for week #17 of Learning Digital Photography. Here’s the show notes for this week’s podcast…
First off, I’ve done some further tweaking to give a little more consistency and structure to the show for your listening pleasure. The three segments that I am going to try to regularly stick to will be:
- News, Events, and Information from around the community and industry – here I’ll share nuggets, information, and other useful snippets from the most recent days and weeks of activity within the photography community. Sometimes I’ll share information that’s available elsewhere, and other times I’ll offer my own perspectives on the news and events that shape the industry.
- Authors and Artists from within and related to the industry of photography are also an area I would like to devote some time to since the Thursday Thoughts series has not seen much attention lately (not that I am planning to either – I think it’s just on sabbatical!), and I had the good fortune of actually sitting down with an area professional recently which provided a source of inspiration for this weeks show.
- Sources of Inspiration – As artists I think we are always searching for and discovering new sources of inspiration. Often these can come from well known venues such as photography magazines, galleries, and the like, but I am not adverse to featuring unusual or new sources either. This week, I will be featuring an unusual source of inspiration, so make sure you stop in for this segment too!
To find out why these links are all up and on the blog, make sure to stop over to Personal Life Media and grab this weeks show! For the link grabbers, here you are:
- TWIP on the Panasonic
- The Online Photography on the Panasonic
- PhotoJoJo
- Photographic Dictionary
- Canon Firmware
- Adobe Updates
- One Million Faces
- Peggy Dyer
- One Million Faces Photo Galleries (The first 5 are kinda cool! 🙂 )
- Sunny 16
- David Ziser
That’s it for today all! Enjoy the show, and we’ll see you back here bright and early tomorrow (well, maybe not so early, as I still have an on-going problem with the sandman! LOL) Happy shooting!
P.S. I am still including a copy of the show locally, so you can grab it from here if you like too. Don’t forget, we still have a poll going on re: Twitter and Blogging, so if you’ve not voted yet, vote here!
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Unintended Inspiration
Today I thought I’d share a little “inspirational” series with the readership. I had taken a break from reading blogs, magazines, news, twitter, forums, and all the other associated activities related to keeping current and learning about photography to actually put together to make some dinner. Photography had exited my mind – I was taking a break, not even thinking about it. So there I was, slicing and dicing, cutting celery, carrots, and onions for a spaghetti sauce, when BAM! I saw some colors and shapes on the white cutting board and my knee jerk reaction was: “Hey, that looks like one of those stock photos! I wonder if I could make one like that!?”
Well, of course I had no equipment set up, no preparation, no lighting, no glycerine (it makes food shine), and had not given any thought to composition or anything like that. But, having the 40D nearby, I figured what the heck, so began to document the process. First, I had the celery cut:
Then, I cut some carrots:
Then, after some onions, it all went into a pot to brown in a butter sauce:
After adding some ground pork and turkey, a little white wine and milk to steam down:
Then once it had steamed down, the final stage, adding tomatoes:
The shots here are not all that great, but it does give a “back story” of sorts and helps to illustrate that sometimes you can find color and inspiration in the oddest of places – even if you’re not even looking for it. So, if you ever find yourself stuck in a rut, trying to find some inspiration, sometimes it’s best to just stop trying so hard. Forget about it and put your efforts into other things (like cooking). Before you know it – you’l have new visions and challenges laid at your feet, waiting for your vision to bring it all together. I’m sure others have experienced this too, so let’s hear it! What other scenarios have produced unintended inspiration for you? Feel free to share your stories, shots, and anecdotes in the comments! Until tomorrow, Happy Shooting!