by Linda
I always look forward to the creative things my Life Sisters select each month for us to Focus on. Each Life Sister carefully makes a selection, features a photo and a brief description to catch our fancy at the start of the month then spends the rest of the month perusing the Flickr gallery looking for our contributions to her chosen theme, featuring but a few of the beautiful pictures that are there. Each one, featured or not, is a treasure because someone else found the same beauty or found a new way of looking at the beauty that she carefully selected. It's always gratifying when someone else "gets it".
This month Judy selected the Alphabet. I have to admit, I was a little perplexed with this one. It puzzled me because I know that I am the kind of person that doesn't read between the lines, think outside the box or take a hint. I struggle with abstract art and if it doesn't hit me like a ton of bricks, I tend to scratch my head a bit. So, I thought, this would be a tough one.
Then one morning, I went to Cracker Barrel. I ordered coffee. The waitress brought my mug, poured the coffee, I did my usual doctoring and raised it up and saw the rim was cracked. I looked again and saw the number 4.
The light bulb moment, the elevator went to the top, the fog lifted, I had a breakthrough!
Last weekend, Kim Manley Ort sent out her weekly email with a link to her post on seeing. It is about a book on photo walks and the quote she had there jumped right off the page and hit me between he eyes!
"Right now, you are missing the vast majority of what is happening around you. You are missing the events unfolding in your body, in the distance, and right in front of you. ~Opening Paragraph, On Looking"
After reading that email, following Judy's lead, with inspiration from Kelly, I went out to see what I have been missing.
I saw the letter F
I saw the letter E
Wouldn't it be lovely to have an entire alphabet of vine letters!
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Thank you Judy for inspiring me to try to see in a new way!
I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks!
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How about you? Are you seeing old things in new ways?
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6 comments:
Well, I still haven't done it, but I love this prompt -and now -vine letters! Really fun! That E is so sweet! I am going to do this!
I saw Kim's email too and that really is a striking first sentence. We miss so much!! If I may quote Will I Am -" it's an emergency to emerge and see!!"
It is amazing, once you stop looking for actual letters but for letters created by your environment, how many you see! But you're right, Linda, you have to step outside the box and really see your surroundings with letter shapes in mind and then suddenly you see them everywhere! And vine letters would be adorable!
I totally get it Linda...it's a real challenge for me to see in an abstract way. Glad to know I'm not the only one!
I'm right there with you. Maybe we should change our tag line to 'abstract challenged photographers'. You did a good job finding this, Linda. I'm traveling this weekend and am going to challenge myself to see differently.
So glad you saw these! I love the ivy E! Searching for any one subject really does open our eyes to what we are regularly missing. Thanks for playing along Linda. :)
So glad you saw these! I love the ivy E! Searching for any one subject really does open our eyes to what we are regularly missing. Thanks for playing along Linda. :)
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