Photography: Everyday Life

One of my pet projects throughout the years has been everyday life. All to often we forget to see what is in front of us. Truly see it. Stop and smell the roses if you will, but with your eyes. The world around us is fascinating. Its ebb and flow something to behold. Whether it be a group of people at the bus stop or a bird procuring a crumb of food off the ground. Stop and watch. That is what I have learned.

When I first entered art school I was like every other person on this planet. I saw only the surface, the things surrounding me were just that, things. There was no meaning, no beauty, it just was. A tree was just a tree. A building only a building. A person crossing the street normal and uninteresting.

I started studying photography. A course in black and white film was required and as I had always had a knack for pictures I delved in head first. And fell in love.

My first shoot was, as all photog's know, a get used to the film and camera shoot. I went out and bracketed in 3's whatever met my fancy. During that first roll of film, I started seeing thing through my lens that i would normally have ignored before. It was up to my eye more than my eyes were looking into the distance.

That changed me. Or rather, it changed my perception on how I viewed things.

Everything is different through the lens. I cropped in odd ways, went up close and personal to things I would not normally have given a second thought to. I shot things in angles that weren't normal.

Then I developed my first roll of film. And almost every single shot was worth keeping. I printed almost every composition on the roll. 20 rolls later, and at the end of my first semester, I looked back through all my pics, all the assignments they were for...and found a common thread. Everyday Life. I was shooting not just random stuff, not just pictures of flowers or landscapes like my fellow students. I was shooting all the mundane stuff that we ignore.

My professor was thrilled when this became my final project. And each semester it remained that, each year getting more in depth, more interesting.

Now it is my pet project. Forever ongoing, with 5 series now. Most are film and as I do not yet have a film scanner, nor have I taken the time to digitally shoot the prints, I can't post them. Maybe one of these days in my spare time I will.

I still love shooting macro, and landscape and nature. It is my nature. I am part elf after all (giggle) and my connection to nature is strong. I worked in greenhouses for 15 years until my body told me I had to stop (hence the reason for art school).

But I love shooting people and random things to, and to this day it is a common theme in my 50,000 image library. Nature and Everyday Life.

These are the digital images from series 5. I have some on film as yet undeveloped as well. I will never give it up. I have multiple film camera's all loaded with varying speeds of black and white film. Never color. Color leads to too much information and not enough imagination. But that's for another post.

Enjoy.