Already a month into the New Year… Our first meeting (short but sweet) was a great success: Dan Gribbin from South Daytona talked about “Birding with a Camera in Florida and Bermuda” and showed us some wonderful bird images. It was special because some of his pictures were taken just here, around the corner! Buschman Park in Port Orange and Spruce Creek Park along US1 are next door and I visit them often. Those pretty birds he saw I had never seen! He knew why: you are not patient enough! And that is so true.
As photographers we need more patience. Start by sitting in the same spot for half an hour. For a drawing class at Daytona State College, I had to read “The Zen of Seeing” by Frederick Franck. I can recommend this book to every photographer. It is about drawing, but more so about really seeing. He had his students sit on the grass for a while and then close their eyes for 5 minutes, after that they had to look again at what they were looking at before and then they could draw what they were seeing.
The way we perceive things… for photographers SEEING is the most important thing.
I dabble in my little studio with my lights and my still life set-ups and usually I have a plan in mind. But how many times I have e-mailed during challenges: “Plan A failed, so therefor I executed plan B”.
The ideas come to me during the night or early in the morning. Love those ideas. And if there is a period that there are no ideas… then I look at the work of other photographers (I am an avid Instagram peruser) and get my inspiration from them.
During field trips we also tried Gavin Hoey’s method of giving yourself just 15 minutes to photograph in a certain spot. I can remember being in Ponce Inlet at Winter Park and one of the photographers said: “there is nothing to photograph here”. We did the 15 minutes challenge, and the most wonderful photographs were taken!! That is also the spot where we first used a crystal ball. Fantastic outing to a very simple place.
It is wonderful to go on vacation to faraway places, but this is just to show you that just around the corner you can also take excellent pictures, you just have to take the time!
Till the next time,
Ans