At first light, let the sounds and colours of the morning enter you. Rise when the animals take breakfast. Over coffee keep a steady hand on a long lens, chaffinches might be dropping by. Or go out into the frosty dawn, well wrapped up and remember your key this time!
At the peak of the day open the kitchen door and watch gulls rinsing their salty feathers in the pure lake waters. After a rain shower study bulging drops on twigs. Smell the sweet damp soil. Listen to the hail, how it hops off the gravel path. Wash the mud off your hands if you can’t resist handling those wet stones.
Towards evening time let the fading light distract you from work, cooking or company and draw you yet again to the window or the roof top. During the darkest night sense the moon or the constellations. Is it going to be frosty or warm tomorrow? Keep some shoes close to the bed for emergency exits.
In winter follow the sun as it sets over the forest. In summer watch it move into the true west and sink behind the mountains. Track it, while monitoring the movements of the earth. Ponder her speed, flying through the universe.
Know the way light streams into the house at angles. Sit with the cat snoozing in each ray, following her from lap to sill. When the light catches a glass or the shadow of a chair falls on the rug, pay attention. Get close.
If there’s a lemon in a bowl or a blue teapot, put it with a pink geranium on a green table cloth and snap it then and there. Cake is good but colour is even better and will sweeten your soul.
Most of all listen to the land. How it swells and ebbs throughout the days. How it warms and cools or sometimes rumbles in the night. How it questions you while holding everything still.
Photograph where you live and what you see. Your own trip, every day, every year, throughout your life. Be there with that camera in your hands.
Because this is the beginning of what I am learning about how to be a photographer and every other thing in life…….
Perfect, thank you for that Catherine,wonderful to know that getting side-tracked is a plus.
Beautiful Catherine, truly 🙂
Stunning photos and beautiful writing. That last picture is just heaven. Where we live there are loads of herons. I think their squawks sound like dinosaurs.
Inspirational stuff, Catherine! Your word pictures and your 'real' pictures are equally stunning!
Knowing where the light comes from at different times of day and at what angles depending on the time of year – very handy.
Catherine – this excellent advice! The concepts of light, dark, movement, nature – they are all there but so beautifully written. Thank you. I am just starting to really enjoy photography as well and I do keep my camera close. I guess I have mastered the first very important step.
Beautiful!
Great photos. Our tutor on my photography course always says the difference between a good photographer and a bad one is knowing when to press the button to take a photo. You certainly have the knack.
June
You have given us wonderful words of instruction and I savor each one as I develop my skills for photography…..
Great photos – as always. Enjoyed my visit today.
Good sun rises/sets Catherine – particularly like the one with the heron flying over – a nice feeling of solitariness.
Beautiful words and magical skies.
You said it beautifully!
This is so beautiful…couldn't have said it more eloquently or precisely myself. Yes – this is what it is to 'live'!!!
I love this. A beautifully written post. I can't help wondering if it's not a chicken and egg situation though.
Do we take photographs because we see beauty or do we see beauty because we take photographs?
I do know I am more sensitive to the quality of light, the fall of shadows, etc since taking photography seriously.
And your images capture those special times perfectly.
Beautiful… in pictures AND in words 🙂
xx Jazzy
So beautifully said – thank you! So important to open our eyes and see the little things…I just came from a walk and snapped a couple pictures myself!
Catherine your words made me smile as I recognised how my life as changed in the last year as I have started taking more photographs. The camera always needs to be close at hand and I have also woken up early and rushed to the window to see whether it is worth getting up to catch the first light!
Sarah x
Beautiful words again. And about pictures……I often do not take my camera with me in the early morning, I do love looking around in silence, enjoying the sounds of birds and wind, but what a shame, every time I have not my camera with me I see something special I should have loved to photograph.
This. THIS is so very beautiful. food, no music for my soul. a quiet symphony that leads me down the path to me, my self. that place apart. xxoo
Absolutely beautiful. This is exactly how I feel about photography. What a gift it has been in my life – I cannot imagine my days now without it.
I try to take advantage of anytime I can get to go out into the garden to capture what beauty or unusual sights I see….your wise words ring true for me.
Excellent!