#319 ASSIGNMENT: GABRIELLE MOTOLA #1
Gabrielle Motola sets her first of four assignments across the coming months and this initial one will have you reaching for a rather different piece of kit, one that will most likely be analogue and one which may even have you leave your camera behind! We'll both be fascinated to see what you come up with in relation to today's challenge and will share the pictures (or indeed notes) you make for this challenge, 2000 pixels wide, or best quality out of a smartphone. to studio@photographydaily.show
For more inspiration, see the notes made by George Murray Levick, photographer to the explorer Robert Scott.
My thanks to our wonderful Patrons and MPB.com who sponsor this show; the number one company in the UK, the US and Europe when it comes to buying, selling, and trading used camera kit online – it’s a safe place to do business, with guarantees upon what you buy.
Note your thoughts and send a picture of your notes, or transcribe, so that we can both share your feelings about what you see. Pic: Jon Tyson
BY MATTHEW HADDOW
Loved the assignment this week. I recently started journaling the pictures I have taken. I have found it to be an enriching process, it really slows you down and I feel the pictures I take to have more depth with my notes. You focused recently on adding sound to pictures, but I have found that this has a similar effect. I have taken a picture of my precious notebook. It’s simple no frills just a basic picture, but means so much to me!! I was always inspired by Alfred Wainwright’s books on the Lakeland Fells with handwritten notes and drawings of the walks he did. This I hope will have the same effect when my granddaughters walk through my pictures after my day.
BY JON KOLB
“This picture idea has been knocking around in my head since the hay was baled. These are fleeting thoughts as I drive the highway to work. The round bales are adding subject to what is usually a boring grass field (often overlooked for the mountains beyond). The color of them, (the bales) blend right back into the stocks they were cut from. Sun is to the west, looking west, they (bales) are missing shadows. If taken (the picture) in the morning, underexposed, wonder if the shadows would be near perfectly round? Black dots on a landscape, a void of information, abstract. On a round field (irrigated with a pivot) the bales would be laid out in an arch, with a wide-angle lens, the shadows might look like a moon phase map. Going from oval at the edges to round in the middle… My travels take me back through the valley at the end of the month. If the bales are still there and creative juices flowing, I will take the shot.”
I took a slow walk this evening without my camera, just Mia my dog - around a 2-acre field of prairie grasses mixed with wildflowers. I feel as though I know this field by heart as I walk around it once or twice every day often with a phone or camera in hand to snap a photograph of whatever catches my eye. But this time was different. I walked slower and looked more closely beyond the outside edges of the field. I noticed that the grasses are gaining height and bulk and crowding out the flowers, some species fading, and others just beginning to bloom.
I did this after listening to the assignment that Gabrielle Motola set for us and although I didn't carry a physical notebook I made a mental note of a few places that I wanted to return to with camera in hand. So I went back into the house and walked around once more capturing several photographs of grasses, flowers, or the relationship between the two from my previous observations.
"Peek-a-Boo" is one of the last photographs of the evening before the light was too low to shoot anymore. When I saw this little Echinacea the first time when I made my camera-less (observation) round I actually laughed out loud. I love it when I find flowers (or any plant life) displaying the character or emotion or interactions we think of as human! I have others from this evening but this one captured my heart. I used a Lensbaby Velvet 56 @ f2.8 and made minimal basic edits in Lightroom (slight desaturation, curves, and a square crop). I can't wait to try more - this assignment was so worth it!!
BY KELLY MITCHELL
Notes on finding the Light. An Idea or Thought, that I was assigned in a workshop many moons ago and it is an assignment that I go back to often over the years. It is something I use when the creative juices are not flowing, I use it like a reset or something that shuts that part of the brain that won’t ‘Shut-up’ about everyday stuff. Find the Light, makes me slow down, to think, to stop and look, to find, to breathe to listen and to feel. I guess this is something that really can’t be taught but it is my interpretation of Finding the Light.
Today, I went to a little place called Readers Rock Garden, it is a quiet spot on the side of a hill and its closest neighbour is a cemetery, the second oldest in the city. I sat and watched the light move from flower to flower and tree to tree and listened to the birds and a very vocal squirrel. It calmed my brain and then I started to see all the wonders of the world hiding in this garden. Discovered why the squirrel was so vocal and all the little birds became so quiet, there was a Cooper’s Hawk floated through and when he wasn’t able to find “anything” he was off and all the birds began to sing again. From this point, I started to create some images and “Find the Light.
