Scattered and Striving

First of all, thank you to everyone who sent me healing thoughts for my recent kidney stone attack.  I'm still not 100%, but trust me, I am feeling much, much better!  And I'm so sorry to hear that so many of you have experienced this kind of pain firsthand, it's no picnic that's for sure!

Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm always finding new things to interest me, and always taking on new challenges.  Sometimes it's a wonderful thing, but sometimes I think I drive the people around me crazy!  I do complete things that need to get done, but I'm always searching and looking for new creative outlets and opportunities.

 

Recently, while visiting the beautiful blog Brabourne Farm, I was confronted with some beautiful floral imagery, by talented artist Kathrin Longhurst, that immediately jumped out at me and made me want to try and re-create the look with photography.  The photo above is my interpretation of Kathrin's work only with a photograph.

If you visit Kathrin's site, you'll see that I fell WAY short, but it's not so much the "getting it" as it is in the study and stretching yourself to try new things.

The same thing is true for the photo above.  After visiting Delores at Vignette Design and reading her wonderful post on still life photography (check out her personal examples, they are gorgeous!), I was off in a different direction.

The concept of still life photography has always intrigued me.  I absolutely love photo realistic images, but if you've been visiting my blog for any length of time, or have checked out my fine art website, then you know that I also love to create images that make you wonder if they are a photo or a painting.

Again, my still life fell flat, and if you look at this website by photographer Paulette Tavormina, you'll totally get what I mean when I say I say that I wasn't even close to creating what I was after.  But sometimes that frustration of not getting it right is what keeps me going, what motivates me to try and try again.

When I started getting serious about photography, I thought, like with my blog, that I needed to pick a technique and stick with it, perfecting it as I went along.  The truth is that with EVERY photo you gain experience.  You learn about light, composition, color, and what draws the eye in.  

For me, photography is like walking into the most beautiful market in the world and taking in all of the sights and smells.  You would never visit the most beautiful market in the world and only visit the flower stall, or the spice merchant.  No, you would go from stall to stall and drink it all in...that my friends is my theory on photography.  Try it all, succeed at some of it, but keep striving to see the beauty in everything!