For now, here is week 5’s photoblitzing exercise we were challenged to do within a 15 minute timeframe. Timeframes make me nervous, so I kind of broke a few rules, on purpose. First we had to spend no more than 15 minutes taking random shots wherever we wanted to show our visual interpretation skills. Honestly, I probably spent about 15 minutes taking all of these shots but I forgot to take a picture of a clock, and anyway I could easily fake this, so you’ll have to take my word for it. I spent more or less 15 minutes, I swear! 

Next, “I went to the woods because I wished to photoblitz deliberately” and in peace. We were given a list of 12 photo possibilities to show how we capture and interpret a place, people, things, ideas.  I chose the Adirondacks because this is where I live.  The experience was divine! I always enjoy taking time to see with new eyes and immerse myself in nature, breathing in, and taking in my surroundings slowly and deliberately looking for new ways of experiencing and understanding nature’s beauty. There’s always something new to see and discover even upon returning to the same path, brook, or trees.  

To be honest again, when I took these pictures, I did not read or check the list of 12 photo possibilities. I decided to just GO and take pictures, and luckily what I photographed with my droid camera phone managed to address 8 of the 12 possibilities. I love and hate checklists so I felt I could not enjoy the photoblitzing process if I carried a list with me of what shots I needed to take. I needed to be free of lists if I was in the woods, in nature. So what was most inventive turned out to be the fact that I went out to the woods with no preconceived ideas of what type of pictures I needed to photograph. I was inspired to capture whatever caught my eye, and these images, honestly, just appeared to me naturally. Some are fitting for more than one of the photo categories. I also learned, as we were encouraged to do, how to embed a Flickr slideshow. I added the photo category descriptions under each picture.  So here is my first ds106 photoblitz…hope you’ll like it!
   

This was my favorite of all the pictures I took because its potential for storytelling is wide open. Someone left their bike leaning against a tree just waiting for me to photograph it. Abandoned for a moment, I wondered who the bike belonged to and if they were waiting for someone, or why they were alone in the woods, like me. I walked around and took some more pictures and when I came back to this spot minutes later, the bike was gone.  Without a sound, or a trace, the owner of the bike vanished, but he/she provided me with an opportunity to take a picture for both the blitzing and a daily create 627. I loved the sunlight over the open space, the shadows and the tree and the bike in the center.    

This week has shown me how much I prefer to begin using my own photographs to enhance my blog posts rather than borrow someone else’s! I would love to juxtapose these nature images with some from NYC. This is John Johnston’s photoblitz app for more inspirational ideas too, but when I visit in the next few weeks, I will definitely photoblitz, and see what images come naturally to me in the Big Apple to juxtapose with these. I will be more deliberate about light, balance, depth, perspective, and I will be ready to capture those moments(this is why the camera phone is a godsend) which will express a thousand words!  (Santa also knows I want a new camera now!) 

We are also supposed to choose at least 3 of what we think are the best pictures in the pool of ds106photoblitz. That’s tough because they’re all so good! Not just saying that either! There’s so much talent, creativity and beauty in so many different forms. I can’t pick just one, two or three!  There was an image of Starbucks and cityscapes that did catch my eye because… although “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,”city life always beckons with its unique beauty too!