Most of my photography focuses on the “big picture” showing the big, expansive views of prairies and big skies. I love the feeling I get when I’m out in wide-open spaces and love trying to convey the feeling of being out in the prairie in my photos. However, I’m trying to learn to notice new things and want to push myself to really experience more of my surroundings. I have a friend that photographs street scenes and I’m always amazed at his work. He notices things I never would and shoots photos that really pull you into his world.
A few weeks ago I was out with my camera on a frosty morning and happened to notice a leaf lying on the ground with some frost on it. As I looked around, I noticed several leaves like this and I decided to spend some time photographing them before the frost melted off.
I had a lot of fun moving around a relatively small area looking for leaves that caught my eye and watching how the sun was lighting up the area and chasing the shadows away.
This was definitely not my normal style of photography and forced me to pay attention to things I wouldn’t normally have noticed.
I was walking near the bank of a river and initially found myself still glancing up at the sky and the river, watching to see if I should switch to my wide-angle lens and photograph “the big view”, but the more time I spent looking down at the ground, the more I started to really pay attention to the views around my feet. Time spent really paying attention is time well spent and being present is something I always need to work on. I recently read a great post by David DuChemin about “should” vs “could” and I’m glad that I was able to drag my attention away from what I thought I “should” be doing and spent some time doing what I “could.”
I’m also very glad that I’ve followed along with my friend’s street photography, which is what nudged me to look at the world a bit differently. You never know where you might find inspiration and looking at a wider genre of photography is something else I want to work on this year.
As always, thanks for stopping by my blog and if you would like to see more of my photography, please stop by my website or visit my online photo galleries directly.
