Category: Musings

personal thoughts and explorations; sometimes evolving as I write ’em.

Touch of Lightness

One form of meditation, for me, is taking a walk onto my deck and looking at what I find there. I “dead-headed” this rose in decline, and lay it on a stone on a work table. I had also noticed a few downy feathers scattered in a couple of planters.
Photographer’s Gold! We find pictures in what everyone else pretends is just nothing.. just stuff. We also ComBine things.

The really nice breeze had already carried off a bunch of feathers, no doubt.. or maybe even brought these to my deck. After playing with exposures short enough to let the feathers blur in the breeze, this simple story presented itself in my mind. I lost one feather after another to the breeze without catching The Moment they were wafted away. Finally, 600, or so, frames later, I pulled some spider web from dead sunflower stalks and the Tethered Feather was devised, so at Least I got a few frames before the next to last feather slipped its line and waved.. or maybe that’s just some frustrated poet in me imagining a wave.
That’s also what some photographers are, I’d say: frustrated writers.
I wish you full appreciation of light touches in your day.

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Something From. . .

Something Else

For all the legacy of photography, still the power of iconic cultural visual literacy to make the “faithful medium” into “something else” is where the magic keeps me playing, over and over. In the initial “straight” digital image, with a little bit of playing, with some of the built-in presets as departure, the circular center of the sunflower becomes something more sinister and mystical.

Editing, here: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC.

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Wishing Perfection

Consistency is a red herring.

https://youtu.be/eR3wU8K5VZQ

In a photography group I watch online, a member posted a photo from a model shoot, asking for constructive critique. Another member’s praise prompted him to lament with  something like, “… if only (my work) were consistently this (good)”.

I understand that, as a developing Professional, you want to be consistently producing excellent work, if only to serve your clients well enough to bring ’em back. And/Or, on the basis of personal pride in one’s work, consistency in grace or technique or inspirational quality or compositional leanness, etc. seems like a worthy benchmark.. . like it means we’re a “real” artist.

Looking to become consistently awesome is a great way to undermine myself, I find.
Having sweeter successes than my “usual” is a very promising and healthy sign that we are growing and deepening.. not necessarily in the skillsets that we often try to cultivate, but in mysterious talents and exciting discoveries that keep us in the game, pull us forward.
The cyclical “rut” is, then, more obvious, and bearable, since we have the experiences of those peak successes to remember and look forward to. Meanwhile it is practice…

not to become “perfect”, but to trust intuition as much as any skills.


In short, Play On.

That’s where the learning is.