A minimalist experiment from yesterday
Recently I’ve been thinking about how much I am learning about photography (and about life) because I am teaching a photography class. Each week I think about and search for ideas that will challenge and interest my students. At the same time I usually discover that I am challenged and interested in whatever topics I discover and decide to share in class.
The more I think about
Teaching and Learning
the more I realize that learning never stops. Sharing what I’ve learned is more than reciting facts and ideas about photography. It’s about revealing who I am as a person and what motivates and challenges me.
Recently one of my students related to me three different times that she reflected on something I had said or done (not part of my “teaching” simply part of me being me) that influenced her in her photography. It was both humbling and gratifying to learn that by simply being myself I was “teaching.”
I have a friend, an aspiring musician, whose sister said to her one day, quite reasonably, “What happens if you never get anything out of this? What happens if you pursue your passion forever, but success never comes? How will you feel then, having wasted your entire life for nothing?” My friend, with equal reason, replied, “If you can’t see what I’m already getting out of this, then I’ll never be able to explain it to you.” When it’s for love, you will always do it anyhow.
― Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
I do it for love…
My love for creating photographs continues to grow. And I am exploring topics and ideas that I hadn’t previously thought about. Recently I decided to rejoin an online challenge called 52Frames. Photographers are given a topic each week and are then encouraged to create and submit one photograph by the end of the week.
I had participated in 52Frames several years ago but got tired of the weekly challenges after awhile and stopped. Now that I’ve begin teaching photography classes I am discovering even more in the challenges than before.
Last week’s challenge was minimalism. On the last day of the challenge (yesterday) I looked around my office and house and wondered what minimalist photo I could create. Then I noticed a single cottonwood leaf that had been lying on a bench in my office had somehow perched itself hanging down over the edge of the bench seemingly defying gravity.
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
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I made several photographs of the leaf before deciding on one and then created a black and white photo that I called Defying Gravity. It’s not the most exciting photograph that I’ve ever made but I like it and I enjoyed the process of creating it.
Today I began working on this week’s challenge: Background. I tried several different approaches to creating interesting backgrounds using a piece of hand-made highly textured paper that I’ve used before as a photo backing. Still working with the ranunculus flowers I bought over a week ago, I found some interesting compositions but nothing that I really said, “Yes!” to.
Serendipity
Then serendipity stepped in. I accidentally knocked a fading flower blossom out of the vase onto the carpet in my office.
I loved the haphazard grace of how it fell and scattered petals around. But I didn’t love the carpet texture as a background. So I wondered what I could replace the carpet background with. I decided to try photographing a beautiful rug just inside our front door and using it for a background.
Then I copied just the flower and it’s petals in Photoshop and pasted them onto the textured carpet.
Finally I tried converting the photo to black and white.
I decided that I like the color version better even though I also like the B&W version. And I’m still not sure that I this will be my submission for this week’s 52Frames topic. But the prompt took me on an interesting journey. Perhaps I will discover other ideas before week’s end.
What do you love to create and what are you teaching and learning in your creative journey my friends?
May you walk in beauty.
Note: Here are some more photos related to the topics “minimalism” and “background.”
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