Perspective

So much of the photographic experience is about perspective. Post a comment to this entry and tell me what you think this is and how you think the picture was taken.

Surprised by Joy

I was very interested in the seed pod from a Queen Anne's Lace as I was walking the dog this morning. Then I found the scene below a little further on and shot it. I was pleasantly surprised by the little fellow walking around on the flower which I hadn't noticed. "The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting." (C.S. Lewis)

The Power of Images

I have spent many an hour trying to capture the perfect photo. Many times while I am shooting I see the perfect photo with my eyes but it doesn't manifest on the film or in the case of digital photography, in the pixels. By the time I caught Mr. Livingston here the perfect reflection in the sand was long gone. If you do not understand the allusion, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was the first self-help book that I remember, written in the early 1970s:

Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgrace and it is dishonor. But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve - slowing, slowing, and stalling once more - was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight - how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else. Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.

Jonathan added another dimension to an otherwise monotonous existence. In the digital photography course this fall, students will teach themselves how their camera works while shooting photos and I will add the dimension of color, composition and lighting which will give their endeavors an artistic quality.