More Undulations

Several weeks ago, I went to photograph at Phipps Conservatory, a botanical garden near my home. On Sundays, they let members bring in tripods for two hours in the morning, but this was a weekday, so I had no choice but to shoot handheld. However, I noticed something interesting. My photography was different. Instead of shooting in a slow, plodding, and very determined way, I found myself photographing in a less ‘serious’ manner, just taking shots of whatever caught my eye. I had set the camera to auto-ISO and figured I would worry about digital noise later on. After all, the newest noise reduction algorithms in Lightroom and Topaz Photo AI are both quite good at cleaning up an image.

One of the things that started catching my eye was the profile of leaves. I actually wanted to ignore the flowers for a bit and photograph the undulations and patterns in the leaves, which led to my Undulations and Patterns Portfolio that I recently started. Even on ‘tripod-allowed Sundays,’ I have found myself photographing more leaves these days. There is something that draws me to them, particularly in the spring, when life seems to be renewing.

I guess what I am saying is that from time to time it is good to loosen up, be more spontaneous, and not have your images be so precious. You can never tell what kind of ideas you might get and where they might lead you if you are more open to ‘creative play.’

Unravelling © Howard Grill

By the way, I have the first issue of Photography/ART all ready to go out this Saturday. That’s my new quarterly email publication that I hope people will find interesting and want to have a look through. If you subscribe now, you can be one of the first to get it delivered right to your inbox :)

If you do subscribe, I really would love to hear back from you as to how it might be able to serve you better. Are there specific topics you would like to hear about? Is the email format OK, or would you rather receive an email with a link to a downloadable pdf? Is it too long, too short, or just about right? Would you like to receive it more or less frequently than quarterly? Is the freebie desktop wallpaper something useful? I appreciate your having a look at it and hope to hear back so that it can become bigger and better!

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