The best time to make photos, if you don’t want any company, and to find peace and solitude, is to go out in the rain into the forest with camera.
Why is nobody else in there in the rain?
The colours are so vibrant, the multitude of greens so lush, the scents and smells of the soil and peat moss make you want to breath even deeper, the colours and textures surrounding you so varied, and the layers upon layers of imagery is endless, if you slow down, to see. Crouch down low, or even better, get down on your knees with your camera and take a dogs-eye view, looking deep back into the brush, and you can stay in there forever it seems, lingering, dreaming and looking and feeling and seeing. Add into the mix, the enlivening smells of the salty sea just on the other side of the woods, and it all, this all, brings everything that was dried up, back to life … including oneself.
To feel alive, is to be in nature alone in rain with camera in hand, lens at eye.
That is exactly what I did yesterday, spending time with horsetails covered in millions of drops of rain. I took it on as a creative project to see how many different ways I could photograph these equisetum, from making the leaves sharp and in-focus, to blurred, or even looking as if under-water with bubbles.
To find self, we must spend time with self, and never alone when together with nature, who is our wisest and most patient teacher.
To purchase this image or any of the images on this page please go to my photography only PORTFOLIO site at JOHIMA.CA … Thank YOU!
Seth Godin would say something like “write badly but write” (and “post to a blog daily“) and to “do bad work” but start.
So that, is what I am doing, I am beginning again. I don’t think that my photography is bad at all at all (it’s quite amazing actually!), and my writing isn’t “bad” … it’s not that extreme, but I have a long ways to go to achieve what I want to achieve. So I do agree with Godin in starting no matter what, and in putting it out there no matter what, because when we do, we improve, we get better at our craft(s), and we actually are meant to put our creative work out into the world instead of hoarding it and hiding it for ourselves. Our talents gifts and creativity is meant to be shared with the world … So here I am.
I don’t know how many times I have promised to post here every day. A LOT of times. And each time I didn’t, or fizzled out after only a few days or weeks of daily posts. So now I start again, in attempts to post daily, whether only one sentence or one photo or a full-fledged blog post. Write and Post. Create and Post. Make Photos and Post. Make Art and Post.
Afterall, as Seth says, nobody is reading your blog in the beginning anyway, right? So whew ! I am safe to experiment here on the internet alone, with nobody reading, nobody watching 🙂
/brenda johima
Oh, I almost forgot to add my photos. I hope that you enjoy the abstract and experimental nature images that I made yesterday in the forest. These are horsetails, also called puzzle grass (according to Google) or equisetum. Our Vancouver Island forests are filled with them, and I found them glorious to photograph while in the rain !
