I realized it has been a while since I posted an actual picture alongside one of my posts. I guess I have just been concentrating on putting all my photos on my flickr page.
Anyways, I took this picture while on a “field trip” with my photography class to the UW-Arboretum. I didn’t realize until I took out my camera, how long it had been since I had photographed something. It had been around two weeks or so — which is a long time for me.
Holding my camera and slinging my tripod around my shoulder made me feel centered again. I don’t know what it is, but photographing takes my mind off of so many things — it’s almost like I’m asleep, not really thinking about anything, but dreaming about what can be there.
When I got to the Arboretum I realized how much there is to photograph. What’s ironic about this is that it is really hard to isolate exactly what I want. Sure, the long grass of the prairie and golden yellows of all the plants is nice, but I don’t want it all, it’s just not my style to photograph too many things in a frame. Instead, I like to seek out one interesting aspect and make it stand out above everything else; in other words, I want my photographs to convey one message about what I was seeing.
And photographing the prairie was really hard. I’m not sure exactly what was more frustrating, being the main course for the mosquitoes, or not being able to isolate individual aspects of the lights and shadows on the prairie.
When I got back home and looked at my pictures, I was pretty unhappy with them. But I did find two or three redeeming shots…this one is one of my favorites. It is a dying and shriveled leaf dangling from a stem. I took about 10 shots of this leaf before I got the one I wanted.
