Day 4 of 365 - 'Sketch Day'

As I was leaving to go out and run a few errands and to take my daily photo my wife asked me if I needed my boots as I was walking out the door. I told her I thought I'd give the boots a break on Sundays. She replied with "Sundays will be aboot something else". Heh...something about the way some Canadians say about just gives me the giggles.

I took a weekend photography class recently and the instructor gave us the opportunity to bring in some of our work and he would review it. The instructor, Dennis High, happens to be the former executive director/curator of the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel-by-the-Sea and is a national portfolio reviewer. I was a little hesitant to show some of my stuff since I really haven't been doing this that long but I printed out a few of my photos and brought them in. It turned out to be a great learning experience and he gave me some homework. The homework was to take my camera out and sketch. Just turn my brain off and point the camera at different things and take pictures. Much as a painter or sketch artist would do to warm up before putting paint on a canvas or going into detail work. Just take pictures. So today I just went out and took pictures. No props, no setup, no trying to find the best vantage point.

Since I do need to post one of the pictures I took I had my wife pick out the one she found the most interesting. The rest will go into a folder that I will look at at a later date.

What Dennis is trying to get me to do with the sketching is to discover the energy or emotion behind the picture taking. The funny thing is I had taken a drawing class years ago and at the beginning of each class one person would model and the rest of us would do quick line sketches of the person in which we were trying to show motion or the energy of their body. I didn't quite get it then but at this point in my life I think I understand now...now I just need to put into practice.