We are surrounded by shapes – in nature, and in the man-made world. If you choose a shape and make a point of seeking it out, it is amazing where it turns up…
What shape are you going to look for?
Come back tomorrow for more tips!
PLAYFULNESS + CURIOSITY Page 15 of 20
Photography Fortnight Tip#6: Rock the diagonal
This is a tip I learnt from the super-talented Susannah Conway. I didn’t realise how much difference it can make when you just turn a vertical or horizontal line into a diagonal – and now I do it all the time.
Why not start looking for diagonal lines in your world!
Come back tomorrow for an interview with photographers Christine Boyd and Xander Neal of Northern Ireland-based photography studio navyblur (and then back for more tips on Friday!)
Photography Fortnight Tip #5: Look down
How often do you check in with where you connect with the earth? We walk over hundreds of different surfaces every day which, paired with an interesting pair of shoes, can make a thoughtful image
Where have your feet taken you today?
Come back tomorrow for more tips!
Photography Fortnight Tip #4: Look up
The sky offers so many surprises – but sometimes we are so busy we forget to look up
Look up when you are out and about today – what do you see?
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Tomorrow 17-year old photographer Ffion Atkinson shares her story. More tips throughout the week!
Photography Fortnight Tip #3: Seek out colours you dislike
We often notice only those things we choose to notice, and zone out thing we inherently dislike. Although I love sunny flowers, I am not generally a fan of bright yellow. So I went in search of it, and found so much waiting for me.
What is your least favourite colour? Where can you see it around you now?
Come back tomorrow for more tips!
Photography Fortnight Tip #2: Take part
Often we have a natural inclination to try to fit an entire object in the frame, however big that might be. Try to resist that sometimes (especially if photographing something quite ordinary), and go for bits of an object instead. Sometimes the results can surprise you – and end up much more artful. The image above is of part of a beautiful ceramic serving dish I found in Greece.
What ordinary things around you have beautiful parts?
Come back tomorrow for more tips!
Photography Fortnight Tip#1: rule of thirds (the classic!)
This is one of the oldest ‘rules’ of photography, but it is so powerful when you consciously try to use it.
Imagine your viewfinder split into a 3×3 grid of nine same-sized rectangles. Try to place the subject of your photo along one of the dividing lines (above), or in a place where the grid lines intersect (below).
What rules do you like to break?
More tomorrow!
Introducing Photography Fortnight on Do What You Love!
For the next two weeks this space will become a place for celebrating photography – and I hope you will stick around for the party!
I love photographs. Memories captured, beauty preserved, promises unspoken.
My Dad is a trained photographer and apparently one of my ancestors was the first ever photojournalist! I have been taking photographs for years, with all sorts of different cameras. In the Do What You Love e-course go out and about in search of beauty and explore what kind of photographers we are. This has made me reflect more on what kind of a photographer I am. I am fascinated by the way the subject matter of my photos has changed hugely at different times in my life.
When I was younger I used to take pictures of everything (and often process them in my Dad’s dark room in our garage, marvelling at the magic as the images emerged in the developing solution). In my early twenties I travelled a lot on my own and lived abroad for several years – in this period I mainly took photos of landscapes and buildings.
Then I spent several years working for UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) and found myself drawn to people’s faces, especially those of children in developing countries – and food (in street markets etc).
More recently I seem to take more random pictures of details – my feet, textures, the sky – and I can’t stop taking pictures of flowers lately. Funny how it changes over time.
I am drawn to simple photos that show raw beauty – whether in the subject, the colour or the feeling of the image.
In the next two weeks I am going to share some of my favourite tips, along with interviews with fantastic photographers (Roxanne Krystalli, Christine Boyd and Xander Neal).
I hope you will also join in and share your own tips and tricks. And if you fancy getting out and about a bit more with your camera this month, why not join Susannah Conway’s ‘August Break’?
So tell me, what kind of a photographer are you?
PS If you want to start seeing the world in new ways, why not join the Do What You Love e-course. Registration is open now!
Morning rituals
When I woke up this morning I had this really strong flashback of my time as a student in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan (and my favourite city in the world). I was sat in my homestay family’s kitchen some 15 years ago making cheese on toast in their strange grilling machine, using the delicious squidgy doorstop bread I have only ever found over there. I had this incredible sense of joy in the moment, as I went through my breakfast ritual in this foreign land, before heading off to school past rice fields and bamboo forests, a whole day of adventures stretching ahead of me.
I keep feeling a very strong pull to Kyoto these days. It comes in waves and my mind keeps wandering East. And when I woke up this morning it struck me what an incredible sense of freedom I had at that point. I was virtually alone the other side of the world, with very limited money but a whole year to savour all for myself. I was picking up the new language piece by piece, with mini triumphs every day as I managed to converse with the old man selling sweet potatoes, or read a new roadsign or sing along with a festival chorus. I went to school in the mornings, and spent the afternoons exploring. My time was my own, to spend how I chose.
And then I realised it is not that dissimilar now. I have a business to run and bills to pay, but one of the reasons I made the leap away from the corporate world was to have that freedom to choose how I spend my time. Sometimes you find yourself working so hard that you forget that it is completely up to you whether you start your day on the computer, or in the park, or in the studio… So I’ve started a new routine for my mornings – tea in the garden and half an hour with a book about Japan before the day begins, and a moment of thanks for this freedom.
What about you? What is your morning ritual?
Life is not a dress rehearsal: two inspirational women share their stories
Today’s shared stories come from artist Kim Beller and comedienne Jenny Wynter.
Kim Beller
For me, doing what I love means to follow my heart wherever that takes me, to surround myself with people I love and to be open to all the possibilities that are usually right in front of me!
I lost my mom a few years ago to cancer. She was only 62 when she died, but lucky for me, we were best friends and she taught me many lessons while she was here. It was after I lost her that I began to listen more closely to the voice in my heart. Things that used to matter didn’t matter so much anymore. I poured myself into art and journaling and making jewellery…..anything to stay busy but more importantly to express myself through art. I have said more than once, “art saved me”. I decided that I wanted to be more serious about my art and creating, but couldn’t come up with exactly how I wanted that to happen.
With Mom
This idea has evolved over the past few years and kept coming up over and over until it pretty much hit me in the face. Thanks to the encouragement of a dear friend, Nicole, I began to share my love of art journaling with others. It started with a few girls in a yoga studio and has since gotten bigger and bigger. I recently co-taught a book-making “playshop’ in Manteo, North Carolina. The joy of sharing the things I have learned over the years and creating with other women (men are welcome too) is priceless.
My world was rocked with my mom’s diagnosis several years ago and we found a house with an apartment so she could live with us, but have her own space. It was really hard to go into that space for quite a while, but thankfully, time heals.
I have recently turned her living space into “heART space”, a place where anyone can come and be true to their self….to make art, work in journals, whatever they need to do in a safe, nurturing and loving space. “heART space” is where I teach “playshops” and share my journey with others. Although it was a lot of work emotionally to re-create this space, it has paid off in so many ways. Being able to share what I love with others, and to honor my mom in this way has been a huge part of my healing. I am able to make art, teach art and share with others in a way that I know my mom would love and be proud of. I love being able to stay home with my girls and to create and work at the same time.
Now that I have this beautiful space to create and teach and play in, my bigger dream is to have some of my favorite artists come and teach workshops here. Perhaps Judy Wise, …..Misty Mawn……L.K. Ludwig…..just to name a few!
[All images courtesy of Kim Beller]
Kim Beller is a mixed media artist, inspired by the sea and all of nature. Her passion is to create expressive pieces with recycled metals, found objects, heartfelt quotes, photography and bits of nature in her art and jewelry. Most days Kim can can be found in her in the studio with the music turned up and the windows wide open. Find out more about Kim by visiting her website or Etsy shop]
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Jenny Wynter
Doing what I love means feeling grateful for the opportunity to make a living – and indeed, just a life – out of something that I would gladly do for free. My own mother was an artist, a singer actually. She was beautiful inside and out, and when she was around my age now, she won a very prestigious song-writing competition, the prize of which was a recording contract in Sydney. Very sadly, she never made it; she very shortly thereafter, completely out of the blue, died. (She had an aneurism.) Thus, not only have I been inspired by her example to do what you love, but I also realised from a very early age that life is finite. That knowledge, that it could end at any moment, has I think, ultimately made me feel like there’s not much point wasting the short time that I have here doing something I’m not passionate about! ·
The first time I saw Edward Scissorhands, I desperately wanted to be an actor. I cannot explain it, other than that it moved me in such a profound way (I was only twelve!) that I remember thinking “I want to make people feel as deeply as I felt today!” From that point onwards, I was hellbent on being an actor. I never sought out comedy roles (indeed, quite the opposite, I really wanted to be the pretty girl, the romantic lead!) but instead found myself constantly cast in them. That probably should have been a hint…
When I was 22, I finally made the move to Sydney to seriously pursue acting and three weeks later found out I was pregnant. I was completely shocked and at first I thought performing was over for me. A couple of years later, with two kids under two, I heard through the grapevine about an improv comedy troupe looking for players. It sounded so fun, so I called up, auditioned and the following week was performing! That gave me enough confidence that people thought I was funny to start pursuing it professionally, and it just kinda snowballed. Not long after that I entered a stand-up comedy competition and to my surprise, it went really well and it didn’t take too long before I was making a meager living from comedy. It’s funny now to think that I accidentally fell into my comedic calling, because in hindsight I think it had been biting at me for quite a number of years before I really recognized how much I loved it! ·
In 2007 my family and I moved to Canada, so that I could pursue some comedy opportunities over there. I had these grand dreams of returning to Australia a comedic superstar, but my hubby asked that before we move to the big smoke in Canada, that first we go to a quiet little town just to get our family on track (my family having received the brunt of the time sacrifices involved in making my comedy career happen). Then something strange happened – we ended up loving small town Canada so very much, in that it was so fantastic for our family’s sense of togetherness that we ended up staying there the whole time. I was able to do bits of comedy here and there, certainly not to the extent that I would have liked, but enough to keep the flame burning. While I was there I developed a new full-length show, which is much more theatrical and incredibly personal than anything I’d ever done before. On the opening night of its work-in-progress showing, I was literally four minutes away from the curtain opening, with my newborn baby still breastfeeding on me and not a scrap of makeup on my face. I had a moment there of thinking “What am I DOING?!” and wondering whether I was insane to attempt this kind of thing. But then afterwards, when the show had finished and I was basking in the afterglow of post-performance euphoria, I have never felt more happy. ·
I wish I had known how long it would take to actually get good. I think that as an artist, you have to have a certain amount of cockiness and belief in your ability to succeed. But I think that, especially in the first couple of years of my work, I really thought I was a whole lot better than I actually was! Who knows, I’ll probably be saying that about myself throughout my entire life, but I think at the beginning I really thought my stratospheric rise to success was going to strike at any time. Now I’m realizing more and more how it really does take time to master a craft and that actually, whatever that ‘meteoric rise’ I was chasing even looked like, it’s a damn good thing it didn’t happen in my first couple of years because I was not even close to ready! ·
Now I have HUGE dreams. My new show (the one I developed in Canada) is called “The Unexpected Variety Show” and I just debuted it last month at the Cabaret Fringe Festival, where, to my delight, it received some beautiful glowing reviews. So now my biggest dreams are for the show. I’m taking it to the Melbourne Fringe this September, Adelaide Fringe early next year and have my eyes set on Edinburgh in 2012. My ultimate goal for it is that we will deck out a big family tour bus and spend the next couple of years taking the show around Australia and then the rest of the world. Blogging and video-blogging the adventure along the way. That would be heavenly. And I’m sure at times, hell-ish! But I’m so, so excited about the prospect of it and you know, I think we might just do it. Life really is too short not to!
[All images courtesy of Jenny Wynter]
Jenny is a comedian, musician, writer and mother-of-three. To find out more about Jenny and her work visit her website or blog, or connect on Facebook or Twitter]