Creepy Spider… and other thoughts and insights…

This weekend was one of the first weekends since declaring that I would no longer be shooting real estate photography professionally where I picked up my camera and set out to shoot.

My husband took a class where he learned to build his own canoe and I set forth to document the occasion for our family.

In doing so I found myself, for the first time in a long while, thinking creatively.

I had some “downtime” to just play along with some unique subject matter (including a lighthouse, a small boat workshop and even some insects upon our arrival home) and really enjoyed being able to think creatively, search for angles, and get my camera out of my standard “get everything in focus and show it wide angle” real estate settings.

At one point I wandered into my own little photographer world… stooping low below the canoe which was up on sawhorses and zooming in on curly pieces of wood shavings lying on the floor below.  That’s when the instructor looked at my husband and said,

“WHAT is she taking pictures of over there?”  

…guess it’s a good thing my husband doesn’t get embarrassed by me too easily!

But it did get me thinking.

It was the first time in a long, long time that I was really excited to upload my pictures and see them on the bigger screen.  As a matter of fact – for a long while I’ve noticed myself avoiding any sort of personal or creative work because of the overload of editing for my “jobs.”  If I took more pictures for personal enjoyment it simply read in my overwhelmed brain as “more pictures to edit.”  So I had really stopped taking pictures for enjoyment – stopped pushing myself creatively.  And I stopped being excited about my images.

Now… on another note I’m also a bit uncertain of what to do here on this site.  As we work behind the scenes on research for our new project – on learning about what the kids are doing in school – experimenting with family field trips and ipad apps and other ways to make learning fun… I’m not sure what to do here on my photography blog.  Eventually that information will be on it’s own new blog.  So where does that leave this special place?

All of these thoughts coming together are making me think that maybe I should get back to where this photography thing all started for me.  When I fell in love with this form of creative expression was when I was doing a project 365 documenting my life in 1 photo a day.  I don’t want to do a 365 project again – but what was important about that project for me is that it forced me to find new ways to capture what was around me – it got me out shooting for myself without anyone defining the assignment.  And it resulted in some images that I still love despite having learned so much more technically since then.

So perhaps a good function for this blog would be to challenge myself to share an image each day that speaks to me in some way.  Perhaps that challenge would be enough to motivate me to keep pushing myself to learn and grow.

Open-ended… just whatever I happen to like that day… some may be new images – some may be older images.  Some may come with lengthy descriptions – some with none at all.  No requirements other than to create and share.  And just see where it takes me.

And I would love it if you would let me know what you think – if you’ll leave a comment and let me know if you see something you like – if you’re visiting… if anybody is out there.  That feedback means more than you can imagine.

So I will start today with an image of a spider I encountered along my front walk when we returned home yesterday.  I don’t own a macro lens (though images like this tempt me towards purchasing one…).  So this is a crop of an image I took with my 70-200 at a relatively high ISO because the evening had already set in.  I love the ability to see the details of insects so close up – especially those that I’m scared to get to close to!  lol…

So here you go – my first daily picture.