Ever Since I Returned from Vacation...

I have NOT been too creative. I've made a few little terrariums, and I've baked and cooked, but not much else. I desperately WANT to do more creative things, but find myself very distracted.... work has a way of doing that to me. Even a fun, relatively easy job can take away creative impulses when you come home tired. {sigh}

Blooming mums out back

Photography has been my only real creative outlet. Without it, I'd be artistically lost. I've always enjoyed photography.... since I was old enough to handle a camera without dropping it. (Okay, I've only recently gotten to that point, ha ha!) Back when photos were taken with film, be it 35 mm, 110 or 220... hey, remember those disk cameras? I had one of those, too. My old cameras would get light leaks in them, and the film would turn out crazy colors from the early exposure it got before it was developed.... much like a lot of the filters out today for digital photography. Kind of funny! "We" went digital to get away from the varying effects of film and to know that we got the best photo that we could, increasing pixels per square inch for better and better resolution, and then we create filters to give us that old camera effect.... funny.

Dishes

I always enjoyed the process of seeing through the lens. It's become second nature to me. When I frame a shot, I am doing one of two things: either 1) going for a journalistic, real life approach to capture what's happening in a moment, or 2) going for an artistic view of what I see so that it touches that artistic part of me. I'm not always successful, of course. I'm always in the process of learning to edit my photography. Composition is becoming more and more important. I still think, "Oh, that's pretty, I want to capture that," without really thinking beyond my initial response to color, form or subject. It takes self-control to stop and really look at what I'm seeing to see if I can get a good angle on the subject before snapping away. With digital photography, it doesn't really matter how many shots you take, does it? With film you had to be more careful because it was more costly. Even when I was developing and printing my own photos, I had to pay for the film and paper, and it wasn't cheap. (Boy was it smelly, though! Whew! I was in the chemistry up to my wrists sometimes, and didn't wear gloves. Tsk tsk!) 


I'm hoping to find my way back into my sketch books and back into the inks and paints. It's been a while... It was before I left for California, actually, when I last painted anything. I know I'm only off course a little. I'm looking forward to some time off soon.... the boss is trying to hire some more help, so I can get weekends off, possibly. That would be excellent! At least I'll have time to blog now and again, which also makes me happy!