Reduction

Walking around the workshop at Grelen Gardens is a bit like visiting an art gallery. There are beautiful bouquets, wreaths in progress, urns with native greenery, and lots of pumpkins. Chrysanthemums in deep burgundy, purple, burnt orange, and yellow—buy one, get one free. Because we haven’t had frost yet, the dahlias are hanging in there, too. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and not know just where to point my camera. But reduction does something. It gives certain moments more space, more consideration. Each photograph I took on this visit was authentic in that I felt connected to the beauty and the space. But the photos are not interchangeable. The ones I share here are the ones that matter most to me. But the reader’s interpretation will always be subjective. Just as it should be.

Lucky

If you are lucky enough to know in any given moment that you are loved and seen and accepted, lucky enough to know what it’s like to be loved even when you are unlovable . . . reach out your hand, wrap your arms around them and whisper, I love you more than you can know. My husband knows that I will always make a beeline to photograph any compost pile of discarded flowers. I will walk right past the perfect petals and spend 30 minutes photographing those that are past their prime. The older I get, the more this practice feels like a gift. I am lucky and wise enough to know this truth as I live it.

Gleaning

This time of year . . . when the light leaves early.

I think we’ve confused having access to inspiration with actually being inspired. We can see more beautiful things in ten minutes than most people could’ve encountered in a year not that long ago. Which is extraordinary. It’s also a little exhausting. At some point you stop looking closely because there’s always another image waiting underneath the one you’re looking at. —Colin King

There’s a difference that is especially evident when I walk with my camera in hand between what catches my eye and what truly holds my attention. These are the pictures I love to live with. I print and frame them, display them in my home on my walls, in my heart, like a giant mood board that makes me feel joy.

Keep Photographing

As long as a body of photographs remains open, almost any uncertainty can be answered in the same way: keep photographing. 
Another photograph might solve it. Another month might make the direction clearer. 
—Martin Kaninsky