Of Course It's Pretty; It's a Flower

I love photography and I love looking at other's photographic work. Like most art forms, there are types of photography I like and types I do not like. But even for the ones I do not like, be it due to subject matter or style, I can usually find something positive about the work.

There is one subject matter however that I never fully appreciated. Florals. I have never been moved by photos of flowers. My response to an image of a flower was usually, "of course it's pretty. It's a flower." I did not take pictures of flowers for that same reason. You could say the same thing of course about landscapes or other naturally beautiful scenes. But flowers just seemed like too much of a "gimme" subject matter. Easy. Like taking a picture of a really photogenic person, you can always get a good shot.

But I must be changing. Over the past year, I have found increasing numbers of flower images in my work. This was not a conscious plan; it just happened. And I have found that it's not as easy as I thought to get a beautiful, dramatic image of something already perfect. It's difficult to capture that grace and poise digitally.

I see this as a challenge now and on a recent trip to the Great Smoky Mountains tried again and again to capture the dainty drama that is a mountain wildflower.

Crested Dwarf Iris

Canadian Violet

 Trillium

 

I'm not sure how much I succeeded in meeting the challenge, but all my trying made our hikes last longer.

 

Happy Earth Day

Good morning and Good Friday from these Smoky Mountain lovelies.

Picture Inspiration - Week 3

This week's assignment delved deeper into the concept of rhythm, taking it a layer further into "motif" as in a distinctive and recurring form, shape, figure, etc, in a design, as in a painting or on wallpaper. This definition brings to mind all the 1980s Waverly wallpaper that we removed when we moved into our house. Not a fan of that type of motif. But what I am a fan of is the patterns and shapes that light and shadow give to ordinary things. Like this sunbleached wooden footbridge decorated with the shadow of its knotted rope siding.

I'm also a fan of getting really close to things and seeing how they look from different angles.

I also get real excited when I can actually stop time and movement and see what my eye can't normally see. Like this waterfall stopped mid-fall.

And I thoroughly love finding patterns in nature.

Those are just a few examples of motif that I found this week.

Images Au Naturale

I swore I would never do it, but I did. After countless hours of photography classes, hundreds of cannisters of film, and thousands of prints, I was sure I would not like digital. But a few years ago, I got a really nice digital SLR and I liked it. A lot.

Then I swore I would never do the other thing that happens after you go digitial...use photo editing software. I might have agreed to crop an image here or there, but I swore I would go au naturale and not play with my colors and use photo effects. But about three months ago, I bought Adobe Lightroom and I liked it. A lot.

So I play with my images. I admit it. But I don't do it a great deal. I can't do it that much because I am still learning how to use Lightroom.

But I still love to get shots that I don't want to tweak. Straight out of the camera (SOOC) images that need no assistance are exciting to capture. To harken back to my days of au naturale, here are a few SOOC images.

The early morning light and the stunning mountains need no correction.

The steam off this mountain lake and the rise of the foothills are perfect without any help from me.

And the agency who did the "Go RVing" campaign couldn't have asked for a better sunset.

Winter Beauty

I do not much care for the snow and cold that winter brings. But if I squint my eyes just right and try not to look at the big picture, I can find some beautiful wintry things.

I Hate To Be Negative...

...but this image would be really boring if I weren't.

Negative space is the space around and between the main subject of an image. Negative space adds impact. Some say negative space gives your eye a place to rest although I've never understood that need. Negative space is the place where things are not.

As with much that I do, I usually take my negative space to the extreme, like so...

But like with most things, subtlety works too.

In the Blur

There has been lots of chatter recently on photography blogs and in photography classes about blurry photos. We're not talking about bad photography here; we're talking about creative license to make something artistic out of what might otherwise be mundane.

In the blur, the snowy forest draws you in.

And this children's choir becomes haunting in the blur.

Koi Pond Obsession

There is a small private zoo just up the road that has a large koi pond. Each time we visit, I become more obsessed with shooting into the pond's water.