Creativity vs. Skill

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As I continue my photographic journey I am realizing that a good picture has more to do with creativity than skill.  Skills can be learned, but imaginative expression cannot.  Having shifted my focus recently from my paint table to my camera, I am viewing the world a lot differently.  I am not looking to simply copy what other photographers are doing.  These days with the advent of virtually full-proof cameras, anyone can take a picture of a pretty flower and have it look really good.  I am looking for things that are slightly different.  Perfect flowers can be boring and I am anything but that.  I seek out the slightly edgy or spent.  I want flowers missing from the spray.  I look for torn edges and unpopular subject matter.  Sure, I will capture a perfectly beautiful rose when it happen to be in my visual path, but I am not looking for them.  

This piece titled “Lavender Dance” was a single shoot with missing flowers in a patch of perfectly lovely lavender sprigs.  I liked that nature had taken some of it’s beauty, yet left some for me to capture still….

My skill will improve over time and I hope my imagination will too!

Wish You Were Here

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http://fineartamerica.com/featured/solitude-blue-sky-art-by-sharon-cummings-sharon-cummings.html

Yesterday was one of those amazing Florida days where I wished everyone I knew could be enjoying the fresh air, the sunshine and all of the beauty that was embracing me.  We took our new Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phones out into the wilderness to see what the cameras could do.  I bought the phone for my business and that is what it is used for 90% of the time, but since we had heard so much about the photographic capacity of these new gadgets we gave them a whirl. There was no shortage of subject.  The cameras took some really nice pictures, but no where near that of our DSLR’s.  My favorite is the piece above titled “Solitude” as it expresses how I feel most of the time.  Working from a home studio without coworkers and/or employees leaves me with a lot of alone time.

But I had the most fun playing with the panorama setting.  This piece below turned out really cool and shows a true slice of Florida wilderness where man has intruded by building a bridge between the city world and the great outdoors:

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/around-the-bend-sharon-cummings.html

Lastly, there were so many wildflowers blooming it was unreal.  Some of these beauties were taller than I was with large golden and yellow fronds reaching into the sky.  Really it was perfect and it turned out to be a lot less about the camera and a lot more about capturing the beauty…..

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/florida-beauty-landscape-art-by-sharon-cummings-sharon-cummings.html