An inviting doorway in Braubach, Germany, a little town along the Rhine river that is the home of Marksburg Castle. This image adds to my ever-increasing collection of doorway images. I like this one for a few reasons: There is a sense of “place” with the half-timbered house in the background; a sense of time with the wonderful greenery and flowers; and a sense of mystery with the open doorway and light streaming through. I am invited to come in and see the courtyard, and in doing so, I expect it to be as pretty on the inside as the outside and to find a refreshing, relaxing place. Come join me here for a cool drink!
Archives for May 2010
Time for Breakfast
An inviting advertisement for breakfast in Bacharach, Germany.
This week I have been in the mood to share photos of some different places, besides Italy. So it is good that we are going out of town this weekend, heading to Spain, to Barcelona. We’ve never been to Spain! A new country to add to our list, a new place to explore, new images to capture and share.
I’ve decided that when I travel I’m not going to schedule blog posts. I like the daily interaction and contemplation of my photos that this blog brings me, and to do a whole bunch in one or two days to get ready for a week away becomes more of a chore than fun. And this is for fun! So after tomorrow I’m going to disappear for a few days and I’ll come back refreshed and renewed and with wonderful images of Spain!
Now off to fruhstuck. (That would be breakfast, in German.)
Beautiful Spaces
I love art galleries. The light, the spaces. A well done art museum provides a place that is interesting and stimulating but also keeps the focus on the artist’s work. Designing a gallery is an art form in itself! This is the Musee Marc Chagall in Nice, France. I love the colors that he uses, so bold and bright. The space was also beautifully done, to display his work and to learn about his life. I wish more museums would let you take pictures. I don’t want to take pictures of the art itself, I can buy a postcard or print if I want that, but I want to capture the spaces the art is displayed in.
Organized Chaos
Ah, Amsterdam. The jumble of bicycles everywhere you turn was marvelous. I love the organized chaos, the repeating lines of them all together. Trying to pick one bicycle, one focal point out of many, was a fun exercise. What do you think, did I succeed with this one?
At the Doorstep
As I mentioned last week, when we were in the Cinque Terre I was just drawn to doors with peeling paint. Here is another one from Riomaggiore, I love the green paint, against the grey of the door and the chips of it on the red brick of the doorstep. It must be the light, the texture, or as one person commented on that post, “I would like to chunk them off and mash them in my palm with my thumb.” I realized that I feel the same, there is an interactive nature to these photos, a desire in me to participate in the removal of paint from the surface, to pick off flakes and crumble them to nothingness.
Now, I could not have said any of that at the time I took the photo. All I knew at the time was that I was drawn to these spots, compelled to take a photo or two. After the fact, I see that this desire to take pictures of peeling paint is coming from somewhere other than my rational brain. The theme this month for the Creative Every Day challenge has been intuition, and it’s really caused me to sit back and look at how I use and follow my intuition in different areas of my life. I realize that when I take photos of a subject like this, it’s my intuition talking. I can’t explain it rationally in the moment, but I act on the feeling then and there. And, usually, it results in images that I like, and that have something to show to me later.
Even if the message is just that I have an obsessive urge to crush paint flakes.
It Takes Hard Work
Evening comes in to Riomaggiore, in the Cinque Terre of Italy. I love the colors and light in this photo. Not full dark, the “blue hour” as I’ve recently learned.
Since night photography has become a recent interest, I’ve had to practice. It’s hard to get a really good night shot. You take so many, playing with exposures and ISO and lenses and compositions… but it pays off when you get that one beautiful one.
It’s easy to dream about doing something, but the actual doing is always a lot harder. It takes hard work to improve, to get really good, to make a vision real. The beauty of it is, if it’s something you LOVE to do, it doesn’t feel like work.
Yesterday I spend the day learning things about XML and CSS code. A beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon in Italy and I was on the computer most of it. Why? Because I have a vision of what I want this blog to look like, where I want it to go, and I’m willing to put some work into getting there. I used to hate being on the computer when I wasn’t working at my corporate job, because I associated the computer with things I didn’t really have a passion for. Computer = work = not fun. The truth of it is, the computer is just a tool for whatever the job is. And now that what I’m doing on the computer is aligned to my passion, it’s totally different.
This is an amazing realization for me, that’s been slowly creeping up. My time here in Italy so far has been spent exploring my creativity and dreaming of possibilities. Now it’s time to continue the dream into reality. I look forward to sharing with you some of these things as I work on them, like the blog update, along with my view of the world through photography.
Thanks for participating in my journey! I love hearing from you in comments and emails and facebook posts. It’s such a fun thing, to be able to share my passion with the world in this way.
