Finding Your Story

Monday evening I taught a class on Mindful Nature Photography.  I told those gathered that I often hear questions or comments about equipment (what camera do you have, how many mega pixels is it, that sure is a big lens), more rarely do I hear questions about technique (what settings do you use--as if one size fits all experience--or more precisely, what were your settings when you made a particular image) and almost never do folks ask me about inspiration.

To me, inspiration, finding your story, is the most important foundational quest behind every image. I've made this my life quest: to be inspired, to find the story that is mine to share. With that mindset, images become like chapters, or subplots, in a larger body of work, movements in a longer symphonic composition. My idea isn't to create images that look alike but rather to present a cohesive whole that shares who I am as a person as well as a photographer.

Continuing with the story theme, I began by showing  a series of images of the ocean. Many of those images were made with a strong west wind blowing. Each image presented a different appearance and I composed differently based on the common elements of waves and wind and sky with one major difference--the light. The light in each image was different and while the weather conditions might have been similar, the quality and color temperature of the light, whether it was dramatic or soft or flat, elicited different emotional responses to each image I shared.

I love a west wind, particularly after a nor'easter. The seas typically run high for at least a day or two following a blow, sometimes longer, and when the wind shifts the ocean is to me its most dramatic. We've had west winds and high seas for a couple days now on the Outer Banks, and yesterday afternoon, I walked out on Kitty Hawk Pier near sunset. One of those images is below.

This last image is from this morning, shortly after sunrise.  Here, the story included a new set of characters--gulls who repeatedly flew into and around the wave splashes. No one was attempting to catch any fish for breakfast. In the spirit of Jonathan Livingston, these gulls seemed to be enjoying the morning cacophony of waves with as much glee as I, for sheer joy.