A day's play.....

The image you post when you don't know which image to post.  You just layer them all together into a single image so they all get a little piece of exposure.  Perfect!

Workshop today - a 'Creative Circuit' where we explored a host of different ways to create bright, colourful, shiny, drippy, floral, oily, papery, interesting, odd, unusual, surprising photographs.  I think this was possibly the best workshop I've done since attending these annual conventions.  Loved it!

Guest speakers today were local bird photographer Steve Atwood who gave a great insight into the planning, techniques, gear and effort, he uses to capture his great images.  

The second speaker of the day was, for me at least, the star of the show.......Julianne Kost.  She had been scheduled to fly in to Christchurch from the USA for last year's convention but then COVID scuppered that entire plan.  The Christchurch crew picked themselves up and have delivered a great event in 2021 - a year later then expected but I guess you get that with global pandemics!  The great thing was that they were still able to get Julianne Kost along to present to us thanks to the now-widely-used Zoom meeting platform.  It was such a buzz having her 'there' in the auditorium with us, though the reality of our position here in New Zealand really took her breath away as she realised that she was talking to a large gathering of people who were sharing the same space, no social distancing, many having travelled to get there.  She was overcome with some emotion as she saw and realised what the world.......her world.......will look like once the pandemic is controlled, something she and the rest of the world haven't been able to experience for over a year now.  It was an honest and very humbling reaction that really made me realise just how fortunate we have been here in NZ.  

Anyway, emotions aside, she delivered a wonderfully engaging presentation revealing a much more personal side of her that isn't seen on her very professional and polished Adobe presentations. She talked about the benefits and growth to be gained from challenging oneself to complete projects - self defined, self-paced, self-determined projects that could be on or about absolutely anything.  Of course, she shared some of her projects - stunning! - and gave us some of the back-stories to the projects - fascinating.  

One of her projects was the inspiration for this image..........when she didn't know how to use or what to do with the dozens of images she'd taken of [fill in the gap] she layered and blended them to produce a whole new and different story.  So simple and so effective I knew I wanted to try it.  Today seemed like a good day to do so.

A buzzy day today - one where I'm feeling very inspired, more curious and more confident.  I want to harness this feeling..........