Just Shoot the Light



Lions Park Beach

St. Joseph, Michigan

This image is from earlier this week when  one evening it looked like the  skies were going to light up at sunset like they sometimes do over the lake and turn the sky into a brightly colored backdrop for this scene I had been thinking about.

I talked Denise into riding with me to the spot I had seen earlier to see if things would work out like I had envisioned.

But not tonight. The clouds were there, and the colors started to come around for a while, but then  they faded away.

So I remembered a little lesson from a recent workshop where the instructor told us to not go into a location with a locked in thought of what to shoot. That way if things don't work out, like they didn't that night, you still could maybe make things work.

In his words "shoot the light".

That simplifies things. It gives you options and doesn't lock you into one thought. Change an angle, change a viewpoint, change thoughts from a brightly colored scene to a moody monotone.

That's not a bad way to look at things. Just take what life gives you and make the best of it.

Don't over think it.

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A wise writer told me...

Grand Mere Sunset

Grand Mere State Park

I just read something by a writer who said she needs to write, maybe not just for others to read her work, but just to write for herself. She writes to just soothe the need to create.

That's what I feel like with my pictures. I take them for me and then if others see them and like them, it's even better. Sure it's nice to have others say they like them, but if I start shooting for just that, I'll see things going down a path I won't like.

Write what you want Denise, and I'll shoot what I want. Creativity will take over and the other things will take care of themselves.

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New subject matter

I don't shoot people. I never have. It has never interested me. Sure the occasional family shot, but never for the sake of art.

But while on a recent landscape photo workshop, one of the others took a picture of an old man working a grinding mill and it was the best image I saw of that entire weekend. It made me start thinking that people could be interesting too.

I went to a location a couple of weeks ago that a club maintains to work on and run old steam driven locomotives, tractors, and equipment. These three were taken that day.

I like them. I think I may have found something new to shoot along with the canyons, rocks, and trees.

Summer day

Just a nice little image for a nice little summer day.

That's it. Nothing else.

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