Photographically, I happen to be one of the luckiest people in the world and I really owe it to several circumstances and the people who helped me during those times.
First, and in the beginning there was my Mom. She would get more than tired of me at times and would tell me to go outside and watch the grass grow. Well, since I was a pretty obedient kid, I took her at her word and would spend an hour or so in the grass in the back yard watching and observing. I literally watched the grass grow and all of the friendly little critters that came with those hours of observation.
Then, there was my 5th grade teacher who gave us a drawing assignment one day. She had an orchid in a vase on her desk and as we were busy working on drawing the orchid, she came up somewhere behind me and said these words, “Oh, I see we have an artist in the classroom!” I don’t know if she meant me or if she even remembered 3 seconds later what she said, but I took her casual remark very personally and with those magic words she gave me her permission and her blessing to become “an artist”. And since “artists” could try and do almost anything, she removed all sense of following “rules” from my head, because what made a creative person, an artist, was the ability to successfully break the rules.
There were so many other photographic mentors and teachers in my life and from many casual comments and challenges, my life path led me to teaching photography and to the wonderful opportunity to share my knowledge in a special way with my students in the Apogee Photo Online Classes.
In the companion article to this one, I introduced an exercise that helps you learn to see with your other senses. Cathy Pinder was kind enough to let me share her experience and some of her images with an exercise that I love to give to students. Take a look at that article (Learning to “See” with our other senses) and give it a try … then share your experiences with me as well. I would love to hear from you.
I have another exceptional student and his work is outstanding. I would like to introduce John Tollefsen from Norway. In our class “Design Elements: Texture and Pattern”, he photographed a leaf and a feather. Like Cathy, John allows me on occasion to “borrow” some of his images so I can play around and crop them. I wanted to share some of John’s images as well as show you the transformation that you can make in your own images by doing another great exercise.
My
original challenge to John was to post a few images where
the pattern was used to highlight the texture of the
object. He produced some wonderful shots. Because of
John’s engineering background, I wanted him to break free of
his education and background inclinations for a little bit
and just “go wild”. To show him what I meant, I pulled out
of his lesson his wonderful image of the leaf above and
illustrated some crops that I thought would change his
images and perhaps open his eyes to another creative process
and another way of looking at things.
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NOW IT'S JOHN'S TURN...
