Camera Movement and Abstraction

Thursday morning I visited the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) with a photographer friend. I wanted to photograph color, movement, gesture, and form. While respecting the artistic creations exhibited there, I hoped to find ways to show beauty through using

as well as from examining the textures and rhythms in the art that I saw there.

When I arrived at MIA I realized that though I had brought my camera, I had forgotten to put the memory card back in the camera the day before. So using my camera was not an option.

Instead I used my phone camera along with an app called Slow Shutter to create movement and abstraction. Sometimes I used camera movement, sometimes I simply focused on form and shapes. Other times I focused on color and texture.

When I returned home and uploaded my phone camera images I was reminded again of just how good phone cameras have become. Wow!

Gesture, texture, color

It was a very slow, peaceful, exploration for me, using my phone camera with no expectations or desire to photograph any particular thing. I simply responded to what I felt as I wandered through the Asian galleries. It felt like a happy accident forgetting my camera’s memory card. And it was a reminder that I can use my phone camera for serious photography as well as for fun.

Over time, I discovered that other things besides camera movement became more interesting to me as I explored and played.

For awhile I became fascinated with different ways to photograph doorways.

Textures and shapes, portals to other worlds

And then I began exploring colors and textures. Soon I was simply taking in whatever I saw and responding by photographing anything which intrigued me.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

— George Bernard Shaw

Play and Learning Go Hand in Hand

My open-ended play and exploration were a wonderful reminder that play and learning go hand in hand. Learning can be playful. Allowing my curiosity to lead me is fun. When I returned home and began editing the photographs I tried to carry my playful explorations into my editing process as well. Possibilities abounded and I played my way through my photo edits just as I played as I made the images. Creating multiple exposures in Adobe Photoshop was another way to play with the images I had created. So many possibilities!

Creative Play is a lovely way to spend a day.

I hope that you too find ways to incorporate play and learning in your creative pursuits in the coming week.

Every Possibility

In any given moment,
every possibility is poised
to spring forth into life.
My task is to remain as
open as I can to the
radical potential of now,
drawing no premature
conclusions, but letting
truth unfold within and all
around me like wildflowers
blossoming in sunlight.
It would be the height
of arrogance to believe
I know more than the
Infinite about what might
come next. Only in openness
can I receive the unimagined
gifts — the ones I never
thought would be mine —
just by finding my center
and allowing it to shine.

— Danna Faulds