You probably have noticed that a significant aspect of my photographic exploits are driven by experimentation. While I definitely value reading articles and finding interesting workshops and classes to expand my photography skills, there’s a special place in my heart for discovering through trial and error.
In our fast-paced world, we don’t always recognize the value of failures, as a key part of our on-going development; rather a fear of failures tends to hold most of us back from really reaching out and trying something that we may not succeed at on the first five tries. What we do after failing is what determines our successes; we can either decide that we’re going to give up or keep trying until we find success. The childlike creativity that resides in all of us should help with this, because, as a child, we didn’t know how to stop trying; just think about the number of attempts it took to learn how to walk…
In a lot of my abstract work, I will visualize what I am looking to achieve, and I have learned over time to improve the connection between visualization and execution; then there are usually a number of attempts to get just what I want. And even after I get what I want, I will try other variations, because sometimes I discover something a little different…
This series of images is from an Autumn afternoon’s stroll through Tower Hill Botanic Garden; my mind’s eye was driven more by the colors and the breeze through the leaves than anything else, as I allowed it to wander about a bit during this exploration. Playing around with a variety of techniques, such as soft focus, zoom blur and camera motion, I generated this set of images along the theme of Autumn.
The playful nature of this discovery was certainly as much fun as the end result, as I truly enjoyed the process. Hopefully, you explore in a similar fashion, allowing you to break boundaries in your photography and other creative endeavors. I’d love to hear about your journey!
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