The Take 52 Challenge is a challenge I signed up for in order to develop creatively as a photographer. When I VERY first started out taking pictures, I was using a point and shoot which gave me no options for settings. NONE. It used 110 film. Remember that? Although I know it was far from being the first thing I ever photographed, the first one I remember was for a school play performed by the drama team. We had re-created scenes from Saved by the Bell. I don’t know why I ever joined drama club. Getting up in front of the entire school to repeat memorized lines would have doubled me over in agony, I was that shy and lacked that much confidence in myself. I was excited to take the photos. Though, still insecure with myself. I didn’t get out of my seat to do it because I didn’t want to be seen. Then, shame of shames (especially for a photographer) after developing the film, I felt like I’d done a poor job and didn’t even bring them to the class to be seen later. To be fair, they really WERE bad photos, bad prints, too. In retrospect, and re-reading this, I see how selfish I was being.
Over all these years since high school my photography has improved radically. But sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in rut. Maybe it’s the same poses, same edits, same clients, same locations, same procrastinations…. For me, this summer, it has simply been ignoring my camera. I haven’t made efforts to get clients nor have I made attempts to practice my craft. Even if just for the fun of it. So my skills have become somewhat rusty. And skills which I had just learned or was learning, I have discovered, are having to be relearned as a result of disuse. But what suffers most is creativity. One of the things I love most about my camera is how it forces me to see the world around me and take notice of how different elements interact with one another. Like a sun beam seeping through slightly opened blinds and casting a patterned shadow over someone’s bare legs or face. Or an unnoticed gnat crawling on the tip of a petal of a dandelion. These are some of the things I noticed this week while I was looking for an image for this weeks submission. Things I would have walked right past and not thought twice about missing because they had never been noticed in the first place.
I am excited as I begin this challenge because I expect it to stretch my creative mind and help me open my eyes to things typically unseen.
This week’s category is Shine. We live quite close to the small city, if you can call it that, in town. So, for lunch one day we decided to take a walk to, arguably, the most well known diner/dive/restaurant in town. They sell hot dogs and hamburgers. On our way out the door I grabbed my camera and opened up my eyes. In fact, I opened my eyes so much my daughter got frustrated that I was taking so many pictures. She was afraid the restaurant would close before we could get there. I took the image described above of a bright yellow dandelion hanging over the gray sidewalk. It was impossible to miss. It looked like the sun (while I was editing it, I enlarged it quite a bit and discovered a gnat on the tip of one of the petals! I didn’t even see it when I took the photo. But finally, I gave up and followed her to the restaurant). On our way home, it was just getting to that perfect time of evening when photographers LOVE to come out and play….the Golden Hour just before sunset. We were on our street and in one of the front yards we were passing, many children’s toys had been left out. The sun was sinking between two houses on the other side of the street and it’s light caught on part of one of the more fun toys. The chrome fender of a newish Radio Flyer trike was shining, blindlingly, in my eyes! And the shadow that the sun flung long across the field of grass beside it…. I just HAD to have THAT photo. It was the one. The one I wanted for the Take 52 Challenge. So I got it and here it is to share with you. I hope you have enjoyed this read, it’s much longer than anticipated. I really do plan to keep these posts fairly short, as a general rule. But now, I hope you will take a moment and enjoy the two images I was so blessed to capture.
