Just for the fun of it

Summer roars on, the heat is stifling and staying cool is a priority. I don't remember being sensitive to the heat (or the cold) when I was a child. Although I grew up in upstate New York, I can tell you that the summers get hot there too... it just doesn't usually last as long as it does in the South. I guess I have become acclimated to air conditioning and ceiling fans. :)

Looking for it

I feel as though, for the past ten years (?!) I have flitted from flower head to cat's nose, rarely missing a beat. Especially while I was doing the PAD project. Don't get me wrong, today I look back at many (most) of my photos and fall in love with them all over again... and wonder if it was really me who took that picture. It almost felt easy.

So... now the hard work begins? Is that where I find myself today? I can't accept that. On some days, I feel as though there's a photograph "right there"... just out of my line of sight. If I could just turn my head in the right direction or stand up to peer over whatever obstacle is blocking my view, then "it" will be there, ready and waiting for me to bring the camera to my eye.

"Photographic technique is no secret and – provided the interest is there – easily assimilated. But inspiration comes from the soul and when the Muse isn’t around even the best exposure meter is very little help. In their biographies, artists like Michelangelo, da Vinci and Bach said that their most valuable technique was their ability to inspire themselves. This is true of all artists; the moment there is something to say, there becomes a way to say it." - Ralph Gibson

Refresher Course

I am suffering from a severe lack of creative inspiration. I think the hot weather plays a role (for me), as I've mentioned this before during the summer months.

I'm going to have to get back into photo-shape if I'm going to take part in the SoFoBoMo project next month. So... what to do? Focus (pardon the pun) on a specific subject for at least a "roll of film"? 

Today, I've pulled out my copy of "Once" by Wim Wenders... looking for a spark, a nudge, an idea.

Stars and Stripes

I didn't realize until this morning that it is Flag Day. So I thought, well - that's cool. I can certainly get a photo of a flag today. There are garden flags, the "real" one on the front of the house and numerous others around the house as well. We Americans put our flag on everything that doesn't move and on some things that do! And I love it. Some people might say that it loses its meaning when it is plastered everywhere. I don't agree. I think we may take it for granted and after a while we don't even notice. But we would notice if all of them suddenly disappeared. My most precious flag is the veteran's funeral flag presented to me after my husband's death. It is safely folded and stored in a glass case on the fireplace mantle. 

I don't care if people outside of this country think that we over-flag. This quote by W. Somerset Maugham comes to mind:

"It is very difficult to know people and I don't think one can ever really know any but one's own countrymen. For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives' tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them."

Anew

It is what is is and what it was shall never be again. The word "still" (as in "yet" or "unchanged") is an impossible concept. Even if you have the same routine from day-to-day, it will always be slightly different. A dream, a conversation or something read in a book will change the way you see things... even the very same things that you saw yesterday. Which makes it impossible to go back; back to the way things were, back to the same place. We can only move forward.