Photography is art. See the world differently, and your viewers will, too.
Even nature photography.
With every shoot, I embrace just how essential it is that I infuse my vision, my voice, my perspective into each image. I work to transport, to enlighten, to reveal. To see, in each moment, something I and my viewers wouldn't if it weren't for the lens through which I create.
Grass Seeds
Herb Garden at Dawn
John C. Campbell Folk School
May, 2018
All these images were taking at dawn in the gardens of the John C. Campbell Folk School in Murphy, North Carolina.
It was spring, and up there that means there was still frost. The bugs were still in their "it's too cold" stupor. Our class met to do some macro work, and to discover whatever else we could.
And even though I found my lady bug and snagged a capture of her before she awoke from her trance and ambled away...
The frost covered grass mesmerized me, so that's what I spent my freezing cold morning shooting.
The sun through the trees in the background (I'm practically on the ground, shooting up, to capture the light and gold and texture of the distant background). The bits of ice still clinging to the pods. The patterns and fuzzy edges. And I didn't want everything tack sharp. Focus stacking didn't even occur to me. THIS was how this magical morning felt and appeared to me. I wanted to convey exactly the same experience to the viewer.
Have you ever been this close to field grass, with frost still clinging to its edges?
Have you witnessed a diffused, early-dawn sun flare off a speck of ice, winking to you from the top of grass made translucent, like spun sugar?
Have you watched the world come to wake, feeling the sun rise, seeing the breeze flutter, soaring with the calls of birds greeting the new day?
Field Grass
Herb Garden at Dawn
John C. Campbell Folk School
May, 2018
Well, now you have.
And then there's the abstract perfection of wind and golden sunlight rustling through the grassy edges of a mountain garden.
Can you hear it?
Will you look for it, the next time you find yourself roaming the countryside?
Sunrise
Herb Garden at Dawn
John C. Campbell Folk School
May, 2018
What do you see, when you open your eyes and lens to the world?
What can you share, in a way only you can share, so others might see, too?