developing

I have always found the different shapes and sizes of manhole covers fascinating but never developed that interest into anything tangible. So when I looked down during my morning walk several years ago, became immediately engrossed in the rusted surface beneath my feet and just had to stop to take a picture with my I Phone, that dormant fascination was fully resurrected and quickly blossomed into an obsession! I could not focus on the road ahead so busy was I looking at the ground at the various patina finishes, words, and patterns of ironwork in so many unexpected places. One day while bent low to the grass engaged in the detail of a scratchy blue cover marked “water”, a plain-clothes security person on Capitol Hill happened by. No, I was not planning to do anything to breach the security of the United States. Yes, I was a bit nutty about how many small circular and square plates were located on the grounds…see! I was surprised at the genuine admiration he expressed when he looked at my photographs, then allowed me to continue.

The great thing is I did not delete those phone pix and now that I have a real camera and have developed my own editing styles, I wondered what my pictures from recent past would say to me now…

   

This morning during a phone conversation with a very close friend, I heard myself say that I am coming back around to who I was supposed to be. Though I’ve only taken a high school class in photography and don’t recall much except the subject matter of what I shot, a camera has been present and in my hand at some point during each decade of my life. When I took the class right up to present day, my eye not the textbook, teacher or what anyone else is doing guides me to what I am to see and capture. I’ve also written in various forms since I was quite young, loving words quietly then loudly; most people have no idea I was a serious introvert and that I was and still am rather shy. Taking pictures has allowed me to develop my own unique voice, to speak in a way that I don’t always have words to express, to design artistic creations that I am unable to put down in another medium. Writing the blog is a license granted to me by me for sheer free expression. Occasionally, I tickle myself with some of the things I scribe and feel a sense of balance twice a week once I hit Publish.

Combining the two...bliss. Adding travel to the equation…utopia. Arriving and developing in more ways than one...

keep your peepers open!®