Tag: photography

One Thing Leads to Another . . .

Watercolors

After finishing the sweater a few weeks ago, something shifted. Doing things with my hands, and completing a project, flipped a switch. I’ve been putzing with knitting, playing with photography, spending time doing post-processing, but it really is not the same as starting and finishing a project. My creative world has become increasingly more narrow as I have focused on photography.

Photography is more comfortable now. I think I “get it” at times. That is satisfying – but it is never as satisfying as creative projects seen from beginning to end. The fact is, I am not a photographer at heart, but the most satisfaction comes from a photo when it reflects something of how I see the world. What that is in photography seems to be snippets of things, the casual portrait, or a good landscape. I am curious as to how understanding photography will affect other creative parts of my life.

Paint brushes are like knitting needles – they are held in the hand, moved and manipulated. Color knitting is something I love – magpie eyes! – and color has been in my head for weeks. Suddenly, greens must be more intense, and red has allure like it has not in some time. Sumi-e and brushes are wonderful, but color is winning now – paint brush to hand, colors on the palette.

 

Spring Vine

Spring Vine

Los Angeles never ceases to surprise me. This is from a park tucked up into the mountains north of the city, in the middle of a rather nice bit of suburbia. With the recent rains, the hills are green, and soon to be filled with wildflowers, for which I will return better prepared to take pictures.

I pushed this quite a bit because the original picture was quite dull. Somehow, ordinary greens never seem to speak of the lushness of spring, so adding contrast and increasing the yellows already in the picture made it more interesting to me.