My Bliss – A Guest Post by Debi Bradford

October 8, 2010 by 9 Comments

This is the fifth and last of the guest posts from some of my blog visitors who  answered the question “How has photography, no matter your expertise or experience, had a positive impact on your life?” (This was a question I’ve been exploring in my recent series Why Photography?)

This guest post was written by Debi Bradford and accompanied by two of her favorite photographs.

American White Pelican Flying © 2010 Debi Bradford

Long ago I fancied myself as an amateur photographer.  As a young lass armed with a 35mm Yashica I dabbled in nature photography and took portraits of friends and family.  Tons of early, mediocre images lie fallow and fading in Tupperware boxes on a shelf.  My hobby took a backseat first to career and then family before being forgotten altogether over time.

Quite unexpectedly interest sparked once again when we moved to the lake away from subdivisions and concrete, traffic and rush hours.  Suddenly, I was exposed to fantastic sunrises and sunsets, wild storms and wildlife.  Simultaneously  I discovered the immediate gratification of digital photography.  Hooked, I began exploring the wilds of our area and discovered the joy of writing about my experiences.  Sharing about nature in blogs and in magazines I have found a joy, my bliss.

However, as to Bo’s Question, “Why Photography?”  some points come to mind:

Photography is an activity within which I can both find myself and lose myself at the same time.

Literally focusing on something other than myself opens my mind toward reflection of larger things.   Contemplation of nature and its creatures, its cycles, its seasons, observing the earth and the heavens keeps me grounded.

Sensory Experiences

The peace and quiet; sound of water, wind, insects and birds; smell of woodsmoke and flowers, riverbanks and mosses; observing the  intensity of clouds and storms, enjoying a golden late afternoon light playing across bark and leaves, diamonds of light twinkling on water; the joy of discovering creatures and places.  In nature all my senses come into play for there’s no competition.  Have you ever watched a praying mantis hunt?  The mantis slowly begins to sway in tune with the surrounding foliage, becoming one with the leaves and branches, matching the natural movements around it.  It blends in; becomes part of the scene.  That’s what I do, oftentimes walking and sitting for an hour before ever picking up the camera.  Soak it in and breathe it, become it, enjoy it, embrace it before trying to capture that special feeling given by Spirit creates a visceral memory with each frame.

Solitude and Spirituality

It’s very Zen and meditative; calming.  When my soul is at its most restless and unhappy I seek being outdoors by myself, just me and my camera.  For it is there, outside, where  I feel great peace and the full measure of Spirituality flows through me like warm honey.  Disengaging from the mindless busyness of the day-to-day and engaging in the clear, focused reality of Life through photography is when I feel Spirit intensely.

Atkeson Cypress Trail © 2010 Debi Bradford

Magic and Joy

The normal person might see a white pelican and simply be gladdened by the experience, if that.  However, when I see a white pelican I want to capture the experience, record the bird’s essence, upload it, look at it a thousand times and broadcast it to the heavens.  It’s my way of shouting for joy … Look!  A WHITE PELICAN!  Isn’t that amazing?!  It’s photographing frame-by-frame the immersion of a butterfly from its cocoon and feeling that wonder deep, deep inside every time I see those images.  Photography is sheer magic to me.  It’s the joy of sharing the wonder of our earth and its creatures.   It’s a visual journal of a life experience.

Photojournalism

Photography has become even more than just capturing an image.  It’s sharing it with others of like minds through my other two passions – computers and writing.  Blogging combines all three and connects me with other like-minded individuals around the world.  Many photographers are content to let the photograph tell the story as that’s what works for them.  However, describing nuances that the photo simply cannot convey – how I found the shot, sharing about a particular place or telling the story of how the event changed my life – fulfills me.  There’s a story to every photograph, and those are the details that make the image rich and meaningful.

Giving Back

It is through my photography of nature that I give back to non-profit organizations whose mission it is to preserve wild spaces.  Nature preserves and wildlife refuges are important to me.  Photographs taken on nature preserves and/or wildlife refuges grace the cover of greeting cards and I give a percentage of sales to the corresponding non-profit.  It’s my way of saying Thank You, my way of helping and giving back.

So for me photography isn’t just a hobby, it completes me and takes me full circle.  I take pictures because I cannot NOT take pictures.  I am simply, blissfully, a photographer.

Debi Bradford lives in Alabama and is a photographer, blogger, and lover of nature. She shares her photography and writing on her blog Giraffe Head Tree.

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Photography as Practice – A Guest Post by Marcie Scudder

October 1, 2010 by 19 Comments

Photography as Practice © 2010 Marcie Scudder

This is the third of several guest posts where blog visitors answered the question  “How has photography had a positive impact on your life?,” a question I’ve been exploring in my recent series “Why Photography?.” Marcie responded with this essay.

It’s something I’ve thought a lot about…so when asked to write about photography…and what it is…and why I practice it daily – I jumped at the opportunity.

Why photography?

A very good question.

I could go back in time and tell you about my very first Kodak instamatic camera..and how I carried it with me everywhere capturing life as I saw it from my knee-high point-of-view. My first ‘real’ camera – I received as a gift from my father while still in high school. It wasn’t long before I went about catching all of my moments of great significance and importance, and before I fell in love with the process of developing and printing in a darkroom. Watching the black and white prints emerge, as if almost by magic. Time taking on a whole new rhythm and beat.

Fast forward.

College…marriage…a career…kids.

Not for a moment did I stop recording my ever-changing life and especially that of my childrens’. It wasn’t until more recently that my passion was re-ignited, this time with a new and different focus.

This more recent story began with an unlikely pair of Pekin ducks, who were intended to live a domestic life, but were abandoned by their owners in a pond not far from my home. It was they who sparked my interest and prompted me to pick up my camera and record – not just my children’s world  – but that of the world around me.

I’d been walking the same path, always in a hurry get to wherever it was I thought I might be going. There was always somewhere I needed to be, someone I needed to see, something I needed to do. So focused on the destination, I was missing out on the journey. It was on this path that these ducks magically appeared. They – the pair of them together – became my daily muse…my inspiration and focus. White beauties in an ever-changing landscape on this singular quiet pond in the heart of the suburban town in which I live.

Quickly – this became not only about the ducks…but a daily exercise in recording the world as I viewed it through my camera lens. The ducks – sadly – met their untimely demise at the first of winter. With wings clipped and unable to fly…they froze in the first of the storms. But – I persevered and continued onwards. There was more – I was certain – yet to be found.

The ‘practice’, as I have come to know it, is about finding the new and extraordinary in the everyday ordinary. It is about nurturing presence and awareness, and recording what is. It is not necessarily about perfection. It reminds me that there is hidden magic in the details, if I actually stop and take the time to look and see what it is I’m looking at.

But then – why photography…and not some other creative form of self-expression?

Photography focuses and grounds me.  It forces me to pay the closest attention to detail. To shadow and light. To composition. To figure and ground. To balance. It acts as a quiet meditation. When looking thru my camera’s lens..the world stops. There is calm centered peace within. With my feet on the ground..and my eye to the camera’s lens – I see all…and only what it is that I am looking at. There is only me. The sound of my breath…my heart beating…an internal quiet where there is nothing other than this day.

Photography acts as a teacher. Through it – I’ve learned to identify flora and fauna and avians that I previously knew nothing about. I’ve learned that by sitting quietly and observing, I can anticipate and thus capture the behavior or movement that might come next. I’ve learned patience and persistence and perseverance. I’ve cultivated a sense of gratitude for whatever opportunity is presented, and an appreciation for that day.

I like to believe that I ‘practice’ photography, that with my camera-in-hand, I enter a place of surrender and acceptance. Never controlling or contriving or manipulating a situation to suit my imaginary needs. This is what ‘is’. Today. This moment will never happen in quite the same way ever again.  Simply observing and capturing ‘it’ as ‘it’ presents itself before me, is what it is all about for me.

It’s a ‘practice’ that is – at times – as much about looking inwards as it is about looking out at the world. It passes through me. It’s not something that is tangible or teachable or easy to explain. It’s something that is felt somewhere deep within and beneath my core. It’s at the moment of perfect synchronicity – that I cock and click my shutter’s lens. That instant I’ve then captured and recorded for all of eternity and longer than that.

Photography challenges me. It pushes me to change and grow…to adapt…to learn new computer languages and skills…to keep on top of this ever evolving world of technology. It provides me an opportunity to play..to go out in the world and have fun with my camera. To create humor in a humorless situation…or to ‘render’ my world differently from the one in which I live. By shifting my perspective and changing my point-of-view..I can transform a scene from one to another.

There are all sorts of other reasons to have chosen to embrace this ‘craft’..and not some other. These – that I’ve mentioned –  are just a few.

Thank-you for asking…for joining me here in my answer. This too has been one other exercise in exploring what photography is all about.

For me.

Marcie Scudder lives and photographs (mostly) in the Boston area. She publishes a daily photograph on her website Daily Practice.

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Seeing in Frames – A Guest Post by Robin Simmons

September 29, 2010 by 11 Comments

Nayad © 2010 Robin Simmons

This is the second in a series of guest posts. I asked blog visitors to answer the question “How has photography had a positive impact on your life?”  and Robin wrote this response. (Thanks Robin.) This is a question I’ve been exploring in my recent series “Why Photography?”

Seeing in Frames by Robin Simmons

A few weeks ago someone wanting to learn how to take better photographs asked me the question, “How do you decide what goes into your pictures?”  Without thinking, I answered, “I just see things in frames.”

Having considered it since then, I realize that my answer was vague and lacking in details such as how to compose a shot, the best lighting, and other technical information.  There are books and websites and classes to help you learn how to frame and/or compose a shot, and they can do a better job than I can of explaining composition, lighting, shutter speeds, and the like, as I am not formally educated in photography and prefer to work intuitively rather than by the rules.  For me, photography is play, a time to experiment with settings and framing, to lie on the ground and point up or turn the world upside down or sideways.

My answer, “I just see things in frames,” was a straightforward response.  I do see things in frames.  I wear glasses and have worn glasses since I was 7 years old.  Everything is framed to some degree by my glasses, and photography is, in some ways, an extension of that.  Photography is a medium which allows me to share with others the way I view the world and the things in the world which catch my eyes through the frames that I wear by bringing the viewer into those frames and my focus.

Through the lens of the camera I am able to see some of the details of the world, small and large, that I might otherwise miss.  When I take a photo of a tiger lily I see the flower, the tiger lily. When I put that photo on the bigger screen or a print, I see the details of the tiger lily that the camera captured, details my eyes could not see. I also see things that my eyes didn’t catch when I captured the tiger lily such as a bee buzzing around the flower like a little fairy, an ant crawling up the stem, a dot of pollen perched on the edge of a petal.  The camera, like my eyes and prescription glasses, also has its limitations.  Light and colors, fog and haze, dust motes and seeds floating in sunlight don’t always translate well in photography.  Learning post-processing techniques with Photoshop has helped me expand my vision so the photo better represents what I was seeing as I captured the scene or moment.

Photography has brought an awareness to my life and to my surroundings I don’t believe I would have without it.  It brings me into the moment, eyes and mind wide open as I hike or walk, sit or stand, connecting me to where I am right now, in this moment.  Carrying the camera makes me hyper-aware of the environment — spotting a small flower in the midst of some weeds or a colorful mushroom growing under a bush or any number of other things I might have otherwise passed on by without a glance much less a good look.

Above all, photography has taught me patience.  I cannot capture a butterfly, a dragonfly, or one of my young granddaughters without learning to be still as they dart around in their dance of life and play.  In that stillness I have learned to wait until I sense I am on the verge of the right moment and even then I may have to wait before moving slowly and cautiously to get within range of what I am trying to capture, watching the patterns that emerge, patterns I would not be able to discern without practicing stillness and patience.

Robin is a photographer living in the secondary snow-belt of northeast Ohio.  Her photography interests include nature and the outdoors as well as travel.  Her blog, Life in the Bogs, chronicles her daily life in Ohio as well as her travels.

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Camera as a Tool Box – A Guest Post by Quinn McDonald

September 27, 2010 by 10 Comments

This is the first of several guest posts from blog visitors who answered the question  “How has photography had a positive impact on your life?” — a question I’ve been exploring in my recent series “Why Photography?”

Quinn McDonald tackled this question in the following post:

Hong Kong, in those years, was a noisy city that you would never mistake for your home town anywhere in America. The smells of lacquered duck, thick spices, the suffocating stench of Durian fruit that hung in the humid air all clashed with the raw sewage running down the gutters. I rose half a foot over the tallest person in the street, and the metallic snicking sound of my shiny new Pentax SLR loaded with 35mm slide film marked me as a tourist–and a new camera owner.

Carrots and Artichoke © 2010 Quinn McDonald

For 10 years, going on a trip meant taking the camera bag—about the size of a diaper bag and much heavier than a laptop. Loaded with lenses—the smallest was the size of a fist, the largest, the length of my forearm, I lugged camera gear through airports and train stations.

I never thought of myself as a photographer. I took photographs to help me remember the details of the art museum vernissages I produced for a large multi-national company.  Was the company logo in the right place? The right color? Were the cutlines on the photos as ordered? Did the caterer use only first-rate vegetables? Photographs helped me answer details I could never have assured the client had happened otherwise.

Jobs changed, travel continued. The camera bag stayed home. Trips were so much easier, lighter, faster. That’s what I aspired to be: light and fast. I traveled 100,000 miles that year, had a housekeeper walk out when I was 3,000 miles away from my 7-year old, and in one unforgettably wrenching week, watched my dad die, my divorce come through, and my boss fire me for taking an unscheduled day of vacation to bury my father. I didn’t have time for a camera. I was trying to provide for my family.

Technology shrank the camera, and made it impossible to use. Technology and I struggled. I lost. How was I going to get along with cameras that had confusing icons? What did that half circle mean—point it at the rising sun? A waning moon? A sliced tomato? I never knew.

What I did know was that the best camera is one you know how to use well enough to take with you. And my iPhone did just that. Within 24 hours of buying my iPhone, I knew how to use every feature it came with–including the camera. It was effortless to download the images to the computer.  My camera was a different tool: I could show clients writing samples and training classes.

The camera is a great visual guide: when I had to take something apart, I took photos of each step, then looked at them in reverse order to reassemble. When my car dripped mysterious fluid, I took a photo of the puddle and the source of the leak to show to the car repair shop.

I’ve watched a hummingbird egg hatch by taking photos of a nest over my head, out of reach of my eyes, but not of my iPhone. I took a photo of the sunrise to mark the last day of writing the book. I took a photo of a tree growing through a tree house, and the images became pages in my art journal.

As an artist, I use the camera to help me see an object one way, so I can draw it the way my mind sees it. This is the reverse of what most people do—they take a photo to show the world what they see through a viewfinder. The artichoke photograph (above) is round, but I wanted a pointy artichoke, and that’s what it became when I used Micron pens and Copic markers to recreate it.

Artichoke Art © 2010 Quinn McDonald

The Hong Kong of many years ago vanished, replaced by an industrial center of tall buildings and massed human traffic. But the stranger filled with wonder still exists in any city of the world, there to witness change, now armed with a camera smaller than the original lens cap.

Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach who helps her clients through change and re-invention. 

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Why Photography? Part V

September 16, 2010 by 9 Comments

Basho’s Temple Bell © 2010 Bo Mackison

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers. ~Basho

(Fifth in a series on why I chose photography as my creative medium and the basis of a new career.)

#5. Photography allows me to set aside time each day to play.

Yes, Play.

I take photos nearly every day. I usually process most of them that same evening. Occasionally the weather keeps me inside, so then I pull out my collection of photographs I’ve taken, and I look for a photo I marked as having promise, but one that I never spent time playing with.

When I first started shooting photos, I thought post processing would have no place in my photography. Then I realized I needed a program to manage the thousands of photos I had, or I would never be able to keep track of what I had. I finally settled on Adobe Lightroom and use it not only to organize my photos, but to do some post processing.

I like to challenge myself to take the photo in the camera, but honestly, there are many times when a bit of a crop, or a little more exposure or clarity improves the photograph. I even been known to take some of the color out of a few botanicals, though I’m not too fond of super saturated photographs.

In the case of the above photo, I started out with 42 shots of this flower, most of them nearly the same. Just a few variations in the composition.  I was shooting with a little wind at my back, and though Sherpa was assisting by holding a wind block, occasionally the breeze would sway the flower. And I was shooting with a borrowed camera, and wasn’t totally familiar with all the controls, so I took a few trial and error shots. By the time I culled out the slightly out of focus photos, and the ones that didn’t make the cut, I had seven photos I liked.

Then came the fun part. Which one did I want to work with? I chose this particular shot because I like the suggestion of the stems coming from the deep interior of the flower. Then I started playing. A bit of light. A bit of black. A very slight increase in vibrancy and then a decrease in clarity to give a dreamy feel to this luscious white bloom.

I played with the composition until I had the feeling I wanted. The feeling. That’s important to me.

That’s pretty much how I do many of my photos — by the feeling I get. Hard to explain. That’s why I call it play. Because I spend a lot of time playing with minor adjustments until the photo is just so.

And once in awhile, I end up with a photo I really love. Basho’s Temple Bell is one of these special photos.

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