Patricia, thanks love the way you think and read into the images. Its the thoughts and the commentary that i was trying to evoke. I have been in the pursuit of creating images and not just shooting them. I don't believe in just shooting, everything must be envisioned and pre-visualized to create great images.
I will have to say that in the older days of B&W that everyone had to do this, since the days of digital camera's this unfortunate idea of shooting and hoping to get something has come into photography. I was taught to see the final image you want to create and make it happen. I spend enormous amount of time looking at images and art to remember what I have seen and evoke some kind of feeling. Natures perfection is all around us, we need to be able to see it and respond. I like to take pieces of this and draw my future photographs. And yes I for sure am the worst drawer in the world, mainly because I think to detailed, but it gives me references for my mind to focus onto the next time I go out. Every time I go out i look at these drawings in the night time and morning. So when I'm out looking for nature to present herself to me, what ends up happening is something from one drawing and what's in front of me mixes together and a get something even better. But then sometimes it could take 7 years to see the final drawing in a photograph. I've said it before Inspiration comes from many sources. Photograph, memories, paintings ect.
The image "In the Rivers Path" reminded me of something Paul Caponegro would have wanted to shoot. The relationship of the rock protecting the tree and the zen like water flowing around the boulder. Its very asian in thinking. They all have their place, without one of them perfection wouldn't had been there in nature.
Take the case of Dogwoods that I have been posting. I set off to create and capture the most elegant dogwoods I could photograph. So I started to draw them from things I've seen and things I would like to see. "Positive thoughts create your path".
On the composition thought, I look thru a framing card, this allows me to shoot at the focal length of what I see and then set the camera up to mimic that. I know I could not create the images i shoot without the cards.. It helps me redefine my focus and composition to a perfect as a shot as I can make it.
"There is phrase I like to say: There are no short cuts. Great photography requires understanding light and composition, vision and patience – simple discipline – simple but never easy." TW
Again thanks for the posts everyone, we can learn from everyone.
This thread has been very satisfying , almost a meditation...In Tim's original post, the #3 image, "In the River's Path", quiets and focuses my thinking...what Tim refers to as pre-visualization...To me it is one that seems to break many rules but draws me in anyway...I hear it, I smell the lush breakage in the constancy of the waterflow, and yet quietly on the top of that boulder an entire history of the seasons is unfolding before our eyes...
It is not the type of image I gravitate to,yet it calms me...I think about it sometimes when I am sitting behind the camera, this weekend past with the camera and 300 on a wimberly head tied into the tree where I had climbed...I spent the entire afternoon and early evening looking through the trees...isolating by aperture and shifting light various forest shots and then as the last rays slid behind the ridgeline the "framing card mentality" caught this brief moment...I have been taking the time to seek the smaller stories within(As in Tim's where that one tenacious leaf on the trio of tree trunks alongside that boulder somehow says "awareness of place". I see it in much of Tim's work ) and hope to grow photographically on their nourishment.
Thank you to all who are placing their vision in our view...I know I will grow from this group of images and commentary...This was my last shot of the day...Patricia S.