Creativity Boot Camp: Day 4, Journaling

Today we are asked to go outside and take pictures of things that Inspire us. Then she asks us to "look at your photos. There’s no need to print them…looking at them on the computer will work fine. Think about what specifically motivated you to take certain pictures. Was it something small and unique about your subject? Was it the color? Was it how certain elements came together and played off of one another? Get detailed. Think about it a lot…as if you were trying to tell a child what made that beautiful. If you were to go back and attempt to re-take the pictures, capturing only the elements that you were drawn to, how would you frame the shot?" (link)

Right now it is incredibly hot, and the sun is beating down from straight overhead. I could wait and take pictures later, but I did this kind of thing just the other day when I was attempting to get photos of my sunny yellow meadow of cats' ears. So I will use those photos and analyze them here...

Pinks

When we first moved in here, the landlord has planted these little flowers all over. I never really liked them. But year after year, one or two of them will pop up in strange places. This one was hiding near an old stump where I knelt down to get a shot of our meadow. Seeing them one on one like this, up close, you can see the little lines and spots, and the individual petals. They've come to grow on me...

I think I would have liked to crop out the leaf on the right and move the grass over the flower on the left. I wish my camera did macro better because I would have liked to focus more closely on the petals and their patterns...

Wild Pinks

These come up around the yard each year too. They're very tiny, but their color is so Big & Bright. When getting close to them, you can see the same patterns on the petals that the cultivated ones have. It's more purply than this picture shows too. I would have liked to move some of the distracting things from the photo and either get the whole plant, or just zoom in much tighter.

Cats Ear Meadow

This is the image I went out to get. I tried several different angles and focus points, but this was the best. No editing at all. I do wish the trees in the back weren't so oppressive, but I let it work with the next photo. The greens, the bright cheery yellow, the imposing woods...

Into the Woods

I wish I had used a narrower depth of focus, but I haven't quite figured out what I am doing with the camera... LOL! To have the whole field out of focus and the edge of the woods in focus would have been more appealing to me. I think I might try to do a tilt-shift edit on this one later...

Death Throes

Ah, my old bike. Over a decade old, probably a decade since I last used it. It's sat in the back yard for the last few years. No place to store it. I added the face to it and a custom paint job, with TESTOR'S ENAMELS of all things... I think I would have liked to angle the camera from the right and above more to get the rusty gears and taller weeds into the background. Something about rust and decay really appeal to me. Old barns, abandoned buildings, rusty cars, vine-covered foundations... I am not sure why I like it. I just do.

Eastern Phoebe

Once I got back inside, I saw this young bird preening itself on the tree outside. The screen makes everything duller. :\ I wish I could have gotten it from the other side of the screen. Some of the other shots were framed on the left with a tree trunk in the background, but the bird wasn't as cute in those. I also would have liked to remove those twigs in the way, but that would have been impossible... LOL! Birds fascinate me too...

Summer Morning, 11:11 a.m.

After watching the bird at the window, this image caught my eye. The way the yellow leads up to the nightstand, the lazy cat, the rumpled-ness of it all... It conveys the languidness of a summer morning to me! I think I would have liked to get down lower and take the shot at a more extreme angle. Put the corner of the bed out of focus more, maybe even the clock... I didn't even know it was 11:11 when I was taking the pic! LOL!

Anyway, I must do something to cool down... I'll try to post the art for today before bed...