Week 43 of 52

This week's theme is Shadows.  Shadows in the summer are easy to find.  Sun light, my lighting of choice, is everywhere.  The days are longer and there are many opportunities to find and create shadows.  There is a laziness to Summer that seems to allow one to watch shadows ebb and flow.  With autumn in full swing, and intermittent Indian Summer Days, the chances for finding interesting shadows are few and far between. You can pick up shadows from artificial light but I wasn't in the place of the most potential, to quote Dewitt Jones, Professional Photographer and Motivational Speaker.  Again, What's a girl to do?

With this project I was trying to stretch my creative self, get out of my rut and grow as an individual.  I did not want to shoot the mundane or the tired common photos.  Again, on the last day of the assignment, I realized that it is the photographer who has to look at a scene and see the next right answer, another quote from Dewitt Jones.  So, as the sun was setting on the last day of the assignment,  I headed the opposite direction of my home after a very long work week, to catch the shadows of the setting sun.  I didn't want just the sunset, although spectacular as it was, I wanted to look at that glorious color filled sunset and and see wondrous shadows.

As I began to shoot the sunset from Palisades Park in Santa Monica, CA, I decided to shoot in black and white, something I rarely do.  The picture you see is a result of that.  I have not liked my digital black and white photos.  I believe I have been comparing them to my film photos and miss the grays that I would see in the photos taken with film.  But by choosing to look at the sunset differently, devoid of it interpretive dance of colors, I saw a different kind of shadow, a sunset shadow.  I don't believe I could have captured this photo without shooting in black and white.  Enjoy your sunset and the beauty they hold.

Week 42 0f 52

True Beauty.  What is that?  That was the assignment for Week 42 of the MCP Project.  As I viewed some of the other entries to stimulate my creative juices, I saw photos of children from toddlers to teens, couples, puppies, kittens, sunsets...  all very Hallmark greeting card.  There is nothing wrong with that.  I was not the that sort of mood.  I had no idea of what to shoot, I just knew that  staging children, the ones cute enough to shoot, or animals was way too difficult for me to create a good photo.  So those subjects were out.  I felt I was too busy to even see beauty, let alone think of, find, and or shoot True Beauty.   I asked myself what is true beauty to me?  The phrase, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." came to mind when thinking of True Beauty.

TRIVIA ALEART!  

The phrase, or one with the similar sentiment, first appeared in Greece in the 3rd century BC.  It has become popularity from Shakespeare's play Love's Labour Lost, 1588.

Sitting at my desk these are the thoughts that run through my mind.  This is another deadline I have to mee.  I thing that my search for True Beauty and the appreciation of it is hard when I was so busy and distracted by my work-a-day world to see it.  My thoughts, again on the last day of the assignment, was to photograph eyes, beauty is in the eye...  So, whose eyes to shoot?  And I did photograph my own with little success.  So, that left the rest of the world.  Not many strangers would allow you to shoot them in the face even if it is a camera you are using.  That is when I saw some of my co-workers on their break and I asked permission to photograph them.  As I called them into my office I explained what I was doing and why. All of them obliged.  I work with great people!  This is the one eye I chose to submit to the MCP Project group.  The others are on my flickr site it you'd like to check them out.

What this has showed me is that you can find beauty any where if you just slow down and look for it.  It was a beautiful thing for my co-workers to share a potion of themselves and their time with me for this project.  That's what is so beautiful, and I captured it in those photos.