That was the title of our photo challenge last week. We were supposed to incorporate a mirror or mirror-ish surface (like water) in the image. I admit that I didn’t spend a lot of time on this photo but, as it turns out, I like it a lot!
The round mirror is a small magnifying mirror that I use when I am putting on mascara. When you stand back a little ways from it, the image is turned upside-down. The trick was positioning myself just right which took many tries.
I’ve noticed that I love photos without color, and I love quilts with lots of color. I’m not even going to spend time thinking about why that is. Perhaps, if there were more hours in the day, I’d give it a good think!
It’s been 11 days since I posted although it feels like it was just yesterday. Steve says that time is time—always the same—but I think that time is moving faster these days. I’m feeling rushed even though I don’t have any looming, horrible deadlines. Why is there still so very much to do? I know I’m not alone. It’s the same for you. Let’s all take a deep breath and slow down for a moment… and perhaps have a glass of wine.
I am still spending time each week on taking the photo for my photo class. This week’s challenge is to Go Big. We are free to interpret that however we want so I decided to show big hands, or a hand as it turned out.
Have you ever tried to draw a hand? It’s not easy because when you look a hand in different positions, the proportions and shapes can be odd. But because we know what a hand looks like, we know what it is. Our eye corrects for the distortions that are right in front of us. In the photo above, if you didn’t know what a hand looks like, you might think that it was mostly big fingers.
I used my new prime lens for that photo, and the next one. This lens has a fixed focal length. You don’t zoom in and out with the camera, you ‘zoom with your feet’. As near as I can tell the optimal distance from me to my subject needs to be about 3 feet. There’s more of a learning curve to using this lens than I thought there would be but I’m determined to master it.
That’s Bear. He’s hard to catch because he won’t stay still.
I travel to Georgia tomorrow to visit the Chattahoochee Evening Stars for a workshop on Sunday and a lecture Monday night. Maybe I’ll see you there! I’ll do my best to post some pictures on Instagram :-).
I’ve written about Ricky Tims’ photography class in previous posts. I’ve been in the class since January 1 and it truly is the best present I’ve given myself in a long time. I have learned so much and have become a much more confident photographer. Even my iPhone photos are better!
Ricky has begun the registration for next year’s class and there is a significant savings if you sign up before December 10. Click here for more info. This is not a class for quilters only—it’s a class for anyone interested in photography.
If you want to get the most from the class, it does require an investment of time. And if you don’t have a good digital camera and Photoshop, you’ll need those as well. But if you are interested in becoming a better photographer this is an excellent opportunity.
My friend, Catherine, and I are both taking Ricky’s 52 Week Photo Challenge. This week the challenge is ‘autumn’. What a great excuse to go to the Dallas Arboretum! Let me just say, they have the most amazing array of pumpkins, gourds, and autumn flowers on display. Every year, it gets better.
Catherine took this photo of me :-).
For me, the photography challenge was to choose the correct aperture and to manually focus. I had to cull many photos, but there were a surprising number of good ones in the group. We also learned some new editing tricks in Lightroom this week that I am very happy to know.
Of the 209 photos I took, I think these are my best choices. Of these, I have several favorites. I’d love it if you let me know which photo you think says ‘Autumn’ AND is also a good photo—in focus, framed well, overall just a nice composition. I thank you in advance the time you spend doing this :-).
FYI: Click on the photo galleries to see bigger photos. Look for the right and left arrows to scroll through the gallery.
#4
#68
#36
#61
I took a lot of street-scene-with-pumpkin photos. We went on mother and baby/little kid day. The children were decked out to be photographed with the pumpkins and adults were snapping away like crazy. There were also a lot of adults without children in tow (like us) who were there to soak up a beautiful day.
#51
#2
#48
This is a yearly display at the Arboretum. Right now the pumpkins are firm and looking good. As they sit out in the sun, and later, after we begin to get overnight freezes, they get soft and tired. The display ends at Thanksgiving, but by then they are well past their prime. If you are nearby, now is definitely the time to go!
I sometimes wake up at night, thinking and/or worrying. Do most women do that? For me it’s not an every-night occurrence—it happens in spurts.
When Steve and I were younger and made a lot less, I woke up worrying about money. Steve never did, and he thought I was crazy to lose sleep worrying about problems that would work themselves out. (It takes a lot to make him wake up worrying.) He was right; those worries tended to dissipate with time.
These days I am more likely to wake up thinking about how I’ve managed to do or say something stupid the day before, the week before, or farther back. I wish I could say that I always say and do the right thing. I try, but I fail often enough to wake me up—thankfully, not every night.
What gets me back to sleep is the thought that where there is life, there is hope. Every day really is a new day, with a chance to do better. Goodness knows, I keep trying and maybe someday I’ll be like those people who always seem to know the right thing to say or not say, at exactly the right time. If you do this too, take heart in the fact that you are not alone. We are each of us a work in progress :-).
Creative thoughts…
Then there are the times I wake up with creative ideas. I like this a whole lot better, even if I do lose sleep, which brings me back to the topic at hand… deep thoughts.
Most of us don’t create in a vacuum—our creativity is fed by that of others. So it makes sense to be open to new ideas, new ways of seeing and interpreting the world around us. With that in mind, I’d like to direct you to this post by Pam Holland. I especially enjoyed the video she posted. Pam is a beautiful photographer and her images do flutter around in my head. Thank you, Pam, for posting them!
I also very much enjoyed the TED talk by Béatrice Coron, a papercutter artist whose work I had not seen until I found this video (bottom of post). Her work is inspiring, beautiful, and thought-provoking. FYI: I found this talk by going to TED and searching for ‘creativity’. I’ll bet searching for ‘inspiration’ would yield wonderful results as well.
I am currently feeling my way toward new ideas, even as I work on quilts that are stylistically similar to those I’ve made in the past. Once these are complete, I can turn my attention to quilts that are, I hope, completely different for me. Until then, ideas are constantly swirling around in my head, and I’m enjoying the thinking process.
In closing, let’s all sleep well, turn off the worries, trust in a new day, and think about being creative!
We sat on the beach today. We read—I’m reading The Martian and it is a terrific beach read! We swam and/or snorkeled. We sat and looked at the waves and the people. It was a really nice day!
I’m working on this week’s Photo Challenge which is to take a photo that tells a story. Here are some of the one’s I have accumulated… What do you see?
Piece O Cake Blog 