But I digress… I was very impressed with the enthusiasm and positive energy that came from the teachers and students of the school. A couple of times it was mentioned how the principal is the fourth one in four years, and how much they like him. It was mentioned that in a time of budget cuts and all kinds of financial craziness, the principal’s motto has been, “Focus on what’s good.” It’s clearly rubbed off. I don’t think you can fake the kind of positive, caring energy I saw in the school last night.

It is a good reminder of a truth I’ve learned time and time again: What we focus on, we get more of. As Christine Kane puts, “Energy flows where attention goes.” If we focus on the good, the positive, the healthy… we’ll align our actions and get more of that. If we focus on the bad, the negative, the damaging… we get more of that too.

As I was thinking about this today, I realized it’s really the underlying philosophy for my Find Your Eye classes. It’s amazing how we look at ourselves or our artistic work and can so easily see what we need to do better. Participants say, “I need to learn more of this” or “I should be trying that.” But what I think matters most, in our photography and in our lives, is to build on the things that are already going well and working for us. Somehow in life we got this idea that we need to be “well-rounded” people. Good and strong at everything. If you believe this, I have news for you. No one can be good at everything. Let me say that again:

No one can be good at everything.

Not me. Not you. We look at other people, compare ourselves and see our own short-comings. What we should do more of is looking at ourselves and seeing where we are strong. Take pride and confidence in those things, and build on them. We do that with your photography in Find Your Eye, but the concept goes well beyond art and into life.

I’m very pleased to have my son heading into a school with this philosophy. In the face of all sorts of challenges, it’s a great attitude and can change the whole environment. It will create great opportunities for conversations between he and I, and will help cement this truth for me as well.

“Focus on the good.” See what’s good in your life and in your art. Build on that.

Today’s image is another market/wheels image from San Francisco. There was a Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building the day I met my photo friends. I was a little early and made a great use of my time. I’m still working on this one, I’m not sure if the cropping is quite right. I love the soft light and the angle on the cart with the crates. I’ll focus on the good in the image as I continue to work with it.

Since returning home from Arizona last week life has been really busy for me. There is a big issue I’m working on in my corporate job and much of my energy is focused on that. It’s interesting to observe what is going on in light of my quest for a peaceful, joyful balance. While I’m busy with work I don’t have as much time for other things, but I’m not pushing them. I’m going with the flow. It’s working out well so far.

I imagine it as standing on the apex of a seesaw. I am not completely still. I have to be continually moving fluidly to keep my balance. If I were completely still and perfectly balanced there at the peak, I would be in a precarious position. One big gust of wind would knock me off completely. But if I’m moving, adjusting as things come along, I can better respond to what comes my way and keep my balance.

So, right now I might be tilted a bit more than usual but I’m still finding myself in balance. I know I will even things out when this issue is resolved. My peaceful, joyful balance hasn’t disappeared even in the face of changing conditions, and that feels pretty darn good.

This image from San Francisco is a great addition to the series. What a wonderful scene it was! The painted brick trying to hide the graffiti, the broom and dustpan and the haphazard signs all make this a “real life still life” with some serious place personality.

I found the urban environment of San Francisco a perfect place to get Market/Wheels images, since the markets are often rolled out onto the street every morning and rolled back into the store at night. Revisiting this image reminds me that market season is gearing up here in my agricultural valley and it’s time for me to get out and seek new Market/Wheels images near home.

Do you have an ongoing project you are working on? It’s fun to have something to seek, and oh so satisfying when you find a new image for the series!

What about sparing thirty minutes for you? If you wanted to do something, all for you, would you create thirty minutes to do it? Maybe, maybe not. We all have a long list of “things to do” don’t we? We couldn’t possibly spare ourselves thirty minutes, we wouldn’t get everything on that “to do” list done.

Yet I’ve been realizing just how much you can do with only thirty minutes a day. In late January I started to learn to play guitar. I have one thirty minute lesson per week, and I practice somewhere around thirty minutes almost every day.

Less than four months later, I have callouses on my fingers and I can actually play a song or two. They still aren’t perfect, and there’s no way I can sing and play at the same time, but the songs are recognizable. And I’m so excited. I can play the guitar, and I love it.

Five months ago I would have told you I have no time to learn to play the guitar. Are you crazy? On everything else I have to do? But I did. And it didn’t mess up any other commitments or items on the “to do” list. It didn’t stress me out in any way. Because I’m doing it with thirty minutes a day.

Turns out, I can easily spare thirty minutes. It’s starting to make me wonder what else I might be able to do, when I think of it this way.

How about you, is there something you want to do? Is there something you think will take a vast amount of time to learn? Maybe it’s learning to use Lightroom. Maybe it’s starting an exercise routine. Maybe it’s creating in an art form you love. I imagine there are many things on your wish list of items to learn and do.

Can you spare thirty minutes? Think about it seriously. I bet you can. And then, you can decide: What you will do with your thirty minutes a day?

When we studied Balancing Shapes a couple of months ago, I had to touch on visual weight in order to discuss balance. The two really go hand in hand! As I prepared materials for my latest class, A Sense of Place, I realized that the concept of Visual Weight not only provides a foundation for balance, but it provides a foundation for many other compositional principles that apply to photography.

So, this month let’s take a look at how Visual Weight works in our photographs.

What is Visual Weight?

Visual weight is a concept describing the way elements in a photograph attract the viewer’s eye relative to one another. Something that attracts the viewer first has more visual weight than the other elements in a photograph. We can use all sorts of compositional principles to draw the viewer’s eye to the subject, but if the subject does not have an adequate visual weight relative to the other elements in the photograph, our composition may not be effective.

There are a number of ways that an object garners visual weight and attracts the eye of the viewer. Here are a few:

1. Bright colors attract more attention than subdued colors. The flower in this image is the brightest color. It immediately attracts our eye and pulls us to it as the subject, even though there are many other elements in the photograph.
2. Brightly illuminated objects attract attention more than shadowed objects. The tree is illuminated by the light, in contrast to the shadowed buildings behind. Our attention is immediately on the tree as the subject.
3. In focus objects attract more attention than out of focus objects. The subject and background are nearly the same in this image, the only difference that distinguishes the a single bunch of flowers as the subject is the focus.
4. Objects on the edge of the composition attract more attention than objects in the center. There are many patterns in these floor tiles, but placing the subject pattern of the spiral off center gives it more visual weight.
5. Isolated objects attract more attention than those in a dense or cluttered area. There are many trees in this image, but the ones that attract the eye first are the ones that are isolated. The trees that are clustered seem to recede into the background.
6. A break in a pattern attracts more attention than the pattern itself. This image is mostly made up of the pattern in the bricks. The words, which break the pattern, attract the eye first.
7. Human faces attract more attention than inanimate objects. While human elements in general will attract more than inanimate objects, faces have an especially strong draw for the eye. While there is a busy background and a lot of color in this image, my son’s face is the first thing you look at.

Looking at Examples

The best way to understand visual weight is to look at example photographs which catch your eye and see how visual weight plays into their effectiveness. Visual weight is only one concept playing into the overall composition, but you can readily see its effects.

In this first example, the red leaf is clearly the subject. While the color of the red leaf is not necessarily brighter than the yellow leaves around it, greater visual weight is given to the object that is different and breaks the pattern. The visual weight of the leaf is further enhanced by the relative focus between it and the surrounding leaves, and its off-center placement within the frame.

In this image from a Steve McCurry photography exhibition, all attention immediately rests on the eyes of the subject photograph. The human face has greater visual weight, which is enhanced by the illumination of the photograph relative to the background and the off-center placement within the frame.

In the image below, my attention is drawn to the chair in front of the door even though the contrast between the door and the chair is not great. The door first pulls the eye by being a brighter color than the surrounding wall and ground. Next I notice the chairs, my eye pulled to the isolated chair in front of the door. The off-center placement of chair and door add to the visual weight of these elements.

The fan in the photograph below has the greatest visual weight through the brightness of the color relative to the other elements. It breaks the pattern of the bars and mesh in front of it, as well as the empty space behind it. Placing it off-center enhances the visual weight.

Time to Explore

Now it’s time for you to explore! A great way to explore this concept is to look through your archives. Pick photographs that you love and analyze the visual weight of the elements. If you have photographs that you were disappointed in, look at the visual weight in those as well. You may find the image falls flat because your subject was lacking visual weight relative to the other elements.

As you go out exploring with your camera these next couple of weeks, keep visual weight in mind. Look closely at the relative visual weights of your elements before you compose your photographs, and see if that changes anything you do.

Come back here and share your results, either new or archive. We’d love to see what you’ve learned about visual weight!

It’s a short read, but an amazing story of the author’s personal journey through a stroke at age 37 and her recovery. As an accomplished brain scientist, she has a very unique point of view. There is much important information in her book, about understanding and helping those who have suffered strokes; about the plasticity and flexibility of our brains to adapt. But what she learned about how our thoughts work as her brain came back “online” is the most important, I think.

We have a choice in our thoughts. We have a choice to engage in the negative patterns of our brain and react to the emotions we feel in our body, or not. We can “step to the right” as she calls it, out of our left-brain, rigid thinking into the wholeness and peacefulness of our “right” mind.

Her stroke of insight: “peace is only a thought away, and all we have to do to access it is silence the voice of our dominating left mind.” Later in the book she discusses the different “characters” that come from the two sides of our brain, and how “we can take a more balanced-brain approach to how we lead our lives.”

I so resonate with her message.

It’s as if she experienced from the inside out what I’ve been struggling with the last few years. This idea of balancing the “doing” and the “being.” Balancing the coexistence of the logical, goal-oriented left-brain me with the creative, spiritual right-brain me. There are both there. They both have their place in creating a whole life.

Photography and writing are the things that help me “step to the right” as she puts it. For many of us, I’m sure that’s true. While I’ve known the benefits of a creative practice for a while now, reading this book helped to put it in a new frame of reference with the physiology of our bodies and our brains. Why we might do the things we do and think the thoughts we think, but also the choice we continually have to change our thoughts and subsequently change our whole perspective on life.

Today I’m honoring my body and my brain. Thanking them for the work they do all of the time. Dr. Taylor has made me very aware of how amazing our physiology is, and, more importantly, my role as the consciousness in this body. I get to choose.

I chose this image from San Francisco for today because of the optical illusion I perceive in it. I love how it looks flat! I composed it to look that way and processed it to enhance that perception. Even though our left brain may understand the reality of what we are looking at, we can move ourselves into the right brain and alter that reality by how we frame the world through our cameras. Fun, huh?

I took very few pictures, so today’s post has no image. Because I really cemented something in my mind this weekend.

There are times that my camera connects me to the moment and helps me to be fully present. And there are times that my camera disconnects and separates me from the moment.

I used to be the “event photographer” in social situations. I used to scrapbook everything and always wanted pictures of the events to capture the memories. Everyone else left the photography to me, knowing I would get great images of the event. What I’ve realized over time is that being the event photographer kept me from being truly engaged. A naturally shy and quiet person, I can often be uncomfortable in social situations. My camera gave me something to hide behind. I didn’t fully participate.

Over time my photography has evolved. I no longer scrapbook, and have discovered that without that motivation I’m not inspired to take event photographs. I’ve also discovered that when I put down the camera and really engage with the people I’m with, I have a much better time. I create better and deeper connections.

I miss some great photo opportunities, and I might not have any wonderful images of my weekend to share here. But I have deeper connections with the people I am with. I find that matters to me more.

There were a couple of times this weekend where I began to think I must not be a “real” photographer because I’m not passionate about taking photographs in every situation. There are times I just want to sit back and be. I had to stop myself from that train of thought. Because you know what? I’m me. I get to decide when I engage the world through the lens and when I don’t. If I start to follow some random rules I’ve picked up about what “real” photographers do, I lose what makes my vision mine alone. What makes me a “real” photographer is being a “real” person who picks up the camera and photographs with my heart.

So the vision of my glittery blue toenails against the blue pool water resides in my head alone. I can’t share it with you today. And the connections I made this weekend reside deep within me, because I engaged with all my heart instead of hiding behind the camera.

Today I’m sharing my “runner up” Photo-Heart Connection from April. It was really hard to choose my final photo this last month. I don’t know if it was because I had so many, or I had a lot of other things on my mind, but it was hard to sort out the message from my heart.

I got it down to two: This one and the laughing Buddhas. I couldn’t decide. So I left it for a little while and went off to do other things. When I was engaged elsewhere the whole message of “Lighten up; life’s not so serious” came to me. It was then I knew the laughing Buddha photo was the one.

This photo has a message for me too, or it wouldn’t have been in my top two. It just wasn’t the right time for me to hear it. I’m sure it will come to me on some other day and time when the Photo-Heart Connection is the last thing on my mind.

I’m reminded of my little mantra:
My photos will show me the way. They always do.

Pretty darn amazing, isn’t it?

Registration has opened for the summer series of Starting the Journey and Journey of Inspiration. See more about the course series here and you can find registration information here.

I’ve found my eye. It’s full of texture and details that make my heart sing, like this door from Korkula, Croatia.

Won’t you join me to find yours? Class starts June 17.

So I won’t be around here much but I will be catching up on the Photo-Heart Connection. I haven’t had time to visit you all this week, and I’m looking forward to it! It’s like my reward for a week of hard work. The Photo-Heart Connection link up is still open until May 7 if you want to join in and have me visit you from the poolside.

Today’s photo comes to you from the coast of Sicily. My sis called me earlier this week asking for a pic of Sicily. Her son was working on a project for school on Italy and wanted a photo to show the difference in the regions. I dipped into my archive and look which one popped out. It was a perfect image to share in anticipation of a sunny weekend! Enjoy!