Washed Ashore

I am a great collector of photography challenge lists on Pinterest, and every time I discover a new writing prompt book I have to buy it and add it to my ever growing collection. What I have yet to find is a book or list that combines both a prompt for words to write and photographs to compose in one neat package.

Last week I bought this book after looking through a few pages and liking the prompts that were listed in it. I can tell that I haven't been writing much lately, because I am overusing words like beautiful, wonderful, fabulous, and joyful. As a creative who enjoys writing, I can do better than that. So I bought the book with the intention of getting back to a daily practice of fifteen minutes of wild writing. If you are wondering what wild writing is, you can read my post about it here. I am not good at too many long term sustained practices, but I am good at returning to practices such as wild writing, photograph class lessons and such.

The prompt I chose to write about on Tuesday was this one: Washed Ashore - Write down five objects that might be found washed up on the seashore lakeshore. I have spent enough time photographing at my local state park where a plethora of items wash up on the shore in any given season, to have a pretty good idea of five things I could write about. But...I am someone who would rather be out adventuring than sitting at my wintertime desk and thinking up found items to write about. I wanted to go out and find those five objects.

Since the tile guy was coming on Wednesday to put up my new kitchen backsplash, I figured that Wednesday would be a good morning to go to the beach and photograph washed ashore treasures. Once a level of trust has been established with your tradespeople, being in the house while they work is about as uncomfortable as sitting in your underwear watching paint dry. You don't want to talk to them, and they don't want to talk to you. That level of trust has been reached with my kitchen people, so I left Dave to cut and apply tile, while I went to the beach.

Tuesday, after I had written for fifteen minutes on Washed Ashore, and decided that I wanted to go to the beach and photograph the five items, I remembered David duChemin's photography class The Compelling Frame. The last time I worked on a lesson was December 10, 2017. This knowledge is easily obtained when you date your homework.

I had left off on Lesson Six - Perspective and Exploring POV. It wasn't that I didn't want to do the lesson. What I wanted to do was the lesson outside. In December, January and February it has been too snowy and cold to be outside for any period of time long enough to photograph objects from at least six different angles. Wednesday's forecast was partly cloudy and mid-40's. With the proper clothing and gear, I could easily spend an hour or more at the beach laying on the ground, shooting from above, from a distance and up close.

I have also learned to throw my expectations to the wind. What I want to find and what wants to find me are often two very different things. I am always blessed when I let things find me.

With some clever creative thinking I have been able to make my own exercise combining words and photographs in a refreshing new way.