The other day I wrote about how equipment and workflow combinations either seemed easy or put obstacles in the way.
The other side of this of course is subject matter, locale and light. There’s a set of conditions that make it easy for me to create images that I like. I’ve always struggled against going the easy way, seeking growth in pushing myself to do things that are out of my reach. Over the last year, this included moving my images into three dimensions from the flat formal compositions that I mastered long ago.
For example, this image is near flat, but renders depth and subtle perspective. It’s a victory for me because a year or two ago I would have tried to take it straight down and flat. I now know that I would not have been able to compose the leaf plus tree reflection plus walkway into a coherent whole by limiting the angle of view.
My audience in this is primarily myself. I’m grateful for the new internet mediated means of sharing my work. Dozens of people see my work everyday on Flickr or here- something that wouldn’t have been possible if I depended on the old physically mediated world of galleries and books.
As I’ve been mastering one area, I’ve been pushing less successfully in another. While my subjects are more in the world, having setting and three dimensions, they still are not of the world. My subjects are generally insignificant, having themselves no real meaning. They reflect my visual world well, the suburban landscape, cities, sometimes landscapes.
To myself, I think of this next challenge as capturing a sense of place.