Image change

I like to tell people I’m on a ‘writing vacation’. Truth is – I have been doing some writing, but my muse has been railroading pushing me ever so gently in a completely different direction. This didn’t happen overnight. It’s been a process that I didn’t really see coming until I turned around last week and it was here.

I look back over the last three years of my life and notice that my frame of reference has slowly been shifting from the macro to the micro.

I have such magnificent views here at the RUC and have taken hundreds of photos – the sweeping landscape, green hills, fires, tractors, birds, insects (notice how things are getting smaller?)

Last week when I was on the dog walk I thought I’d get a close-up shot of one of the millions of weeds on the ground. I knelt down and took a few shots – meanwhile the dogs were waiting patiently (yawning, tapping their paws, howling at me to c’mon!) It wasn’t until I looked at the photo afterwards that I noticed I’d captured something awesome – a spider catching a fly on the tiny leaf.

Okay, you might not think this is awesome (and I wouldn’t blame you) but the chances of me choosing that weed at that moment (out of the millions of weeds I’d been treading on for the last half-hour) when the spider actually caught the fly, is a one in a million or billion or whatever chance (let’s just agree at this point that statistics isn’t my strong suit).

I’m digressing from my main theme, but here’s the photo. Notice how tiny the weed is by the size of the fly. It’s still flapping it’s wings – the poor dear…

So I’ve been taking these micro close-ups…and while I’m here I’ll digress again – can anyone tell me (maybe Pauline) what this flower is? It’s got me beat. It had fallen from a tree, but I’m not sure which tree it was so I can’t give a leaf description. It looks like something out of an alien movie.

Mystery flowery alien thing

Anyway, back on track – over the past few years I’ve felt myself becoming more focused on the visual side of creativity rather than the written word. I start to write and then my mind wanders off to any small thing that comes my way and I feel I have to take a photo. Some of my photos are nice, but there came a point where I wanted to do more with them. I wasn’t sure what, so I started redefining them into (what I think are) works of art.

So here are the first two of my efforts (I’ve done about ten so far) and to satisfy my urges I’ll start putting them in a new section called …

*********************Arty Bits*******************

The first one is a photo I took of a piece of red fungi off a tree. I had to do something artistic with it so I turned it into a weird kind of flower thingy..

I named it Beyond Terracotta

Then I found a photo I had taken of a mango flower. These things are everywhere at the moment and it’s features are something you don’t notice until you get up close and personal and do a micro shot. I found all the flowers have, what looks like, a little face on them – so I placed the cute little dude in a bubble and called it Mango Flower in Bubble (hey that’s original!) 😀

Now I’m by no means calling myself an artist, but there is definitely an urge that I need to get out of my system.

I’ve read about people who have been knocked on the head and suddenly become concert pianists, but I haven’t been knocked on the head (that I remember) so I’m not sure why this change has come over me.

Have you ever had an urge to do something completely different?
Am I turning into an eccentric old cat lady?
I’d like to know your thoughts.

In the meantime – have a great week! xxx