Before we begin today’s post, I have a question for you fabulous peeps.  I enjoy writing this blog and have gotten into the habit of posting content every weekday.  I do it for myself, not for the stats or the comments or for whatever may eventually come from it, if anything.  But I just read an article that basically said readers may find frequent communication to be overwhelming.  Do you find 5 posts a week to be too much to read? If you are a subscriber (Woohoo! Thank you! We’re almost to my goal of 100!), do posts pile up in your inbox? Would you prefer 3 a week? Do you care? I appreciate your feedback.  (While you’re at it, do share with me what you most like reading about here.)

Over the past two weeks of Vivienne McMaster’s two-week class, Rule-Free Photography, I had fun being reminded that “photography isn’t about how much we know, but rather about how we engage with the world around us.” I found myself absolutely loving the wildly inspiring Flickr community of the class.  I made so many wonderful connections as we encouraged each other’s creativity with each daily prompt.  I haven’t felt this much motivation to share my work since I took Picture Summer almost a year ago.  It is really fun to see how each person interprets the prompts and to receive such delightful compliments on my own photos.

Of course we need rules in photography, but why not keep that beginner’s sense of experimental playfulness? Often making mistakes or literally pointing and shooting and seeing what comes out of that can lead to finding our own voice as photographers.

Playing in Pixlr Express

So… why not keep going? With another month to wait until Picture Black & White begins, why not find yet another inspiring community in Vivienne’s next class? “Swan Dive is an exploration into your visual voice and your unique story.  The course is based around creative adventuring and developing our creative voice as photographic artists.”

It is all about engaging in the art of post-processing and seeing what incredible things we can create.

It is about making friends with post-processing programs (yes, like photoshop or lightroom or other online and free programs).

It is about creatively  experimenting with things like layers, textures, borders, light leaks, cloning and double exposing!

It is about being in a creative community…and we have an incredible group gathered for this class!

Week 1: our creative intuition.  

“What is our creative intuition?  It is what draws us to pick up a camera or to write down a story, even if we don’t know how or believe that we can do it yet.  It is experimenting and seeing what we can find.  It is trying new things and the feeling you get when something feels right, like home, like it just fits or that it feels like you!”

We are going to follow it down unexpected paths.  

We are going to look in between the lines.

We are going to follow it outside the box.

We are going to bond with the ‘awkward stage’ and push through to make images we love.

Here we go!!! 

(I have to tell you that I am a bit behind in the class already!)