As the Gallery is quite a creative thing to take part in, I thought that I'd take part in it this time via my new blog, especially since part of the reason I set it up was to be able to indulge myself by doing more of this sort of thing. When I saw the prompt for this week's Gallery, I thought that it would be quite easy, but actually I've found it wasn't. I'm not a prolific photographer these days. I used to be quite keen, to the extent that in pre-digital days I had my own darkroom, but that was a long time ago. However with all the inspiring photographs I see on other people's blogs, I'd love to have a go again. I also recently picked up a bargain book called
99 Digital PhotoART Ideas: Create Your Own Art for Your Walls
by Annabel Williams, which really inspired me - lots of ideas for taking photographs as artwork, and encouraging you to take more control of your camera - something I've not done with my digital SLR - partly because I've been too lazy, and partly because I've not read the manual properly! I quite fancy getting one or two more lenses, but having seen the price of the ones I want, I think they'll have to go on the wish list for a while.
Anyway, I took a look at what I'd got, and most of the photos which I'm proud of, I felt I could take no credit for. The scene itself was beautiful, the effect I'd achieved was entirely accidental, or my kids looked particularly cute in that shot, but it was nothing to do with me. Now I don't suppose that really matters, you can be proud of a photo for any reason you like, but I wanted something I felt I could take some credit for. In the end, I chose this one which I took on our recent holiday to Cornwall (our first proper holiday for 7 years). I've not done anything with it yet, but I feel it has great potential, and that I can take some credit for the composition, if nothing else! One of the first priorities will be to get rid of the yellow lines, which I feel are far too intrusive. I'd also like to see what it looks like in black and white. Although the purist in me feels that digitally editing photos is in some way 'cheating' I know that these days, it's a rare photo that hasn't been edited, and lets face it, plenty of image manipulation used to go on in the darkroom anyway! Perehaps when I get round to doing something with it, I'll post the finished result so you can see the difference.
