Just after I got to my shop this morning I received a text on my phone that read, “ Hi, How’s your shop today? I hope you sell something. What’s your article going to be about this week?”
To tell the truth, at that moment I was walking down the street to get a coffee from Tim Horton’s and I hadn’t thought about my shop, impending sales or my article.
Just coffee. However, when I got to the coffee shop there was a line, so to keep from being rude I returned a text that said, “I dunno, me too, dunno.”
I’ll shorten this story by saying that about four or five hours later I received another text from my friend Jo that said, “I have pictures for you of flowers in your yard. Stop by on your way home tonight and get the USB drive. They’ll be edited to PSDs and ready for your article.”
So the images I am posting this week are again from my photography pal Jo. However, this time she didn’t have to wander around in the rain.
Spring is just beginning, and there are many plants in the process of poking out of the ground and blooming. I haven’t taken the time to photograph anything anywhere in the garden yet.
Maybe next week.
For me, photographing my wife’s garden is quite a time consuming process that includes a tripod, an off-camera flash or two, reflectors, and sometimes even a backdrop.
My wife used to complain that I enjoyed the photography more than her garden.
That may be so.
When I opened Jo’s images on the USB drive it was obvious that she was of the same mindset as my wife, and enjoyed the spring garden as much as she was enjoying pointing her camera’s 70-200mm lens at everything growing there.
I have been noticing more and more flower pictures being shown on our local Facebook photographer’s page. I suppose Jo, like most of those that are posting flower pictures, could wander the mountain meadows around Kamloops. But most of the pictures I see are of the same one or two early blooming wild plants, whereas the large fenced in garden at my place has lots of different shapes and colours to choose from, and if one is, like me, more interested in the image then the flower, a colourful garden is a great choice.
This is a good time to get out with one’s camera. Whether it’s to photograph plants and flowers in the rain or on a sunny day the growth and colours that spring brings is so stimulating.
The famous Canadian photographer Freeman Patterson, in his book, “Photography and the Art of Seeing” wrote, “ Seeing, in the finest and broadest sense, means using your senses, you intellect, and your emotions. It means encountering your subject matter with your whole being. It means looking beyond the labels of things and discovering the remarkable world around you.”
And thanks to my good friend Jo McAvany.
These are my thoughts for this week. Contact me at www.enmanscamera.com or emcam@telus.net. Stop by Enman’s Camera at 423 Tranquille Road in Kamloops. I sell an interesting selection of used photographic equipment. Don’t hesitate to call me at 250-371-3069.