Of light and shadow and books and safe harbours

I just discovered these photos lost on my hard drive. I remember taking them last October, right before my birthday, around the same time as I took these. Whilst I posted the others, these never made it to the blog.

The fact is that these pictures are not in anyway what this blog is about. And yet, they are. I was quite obviously experimenting, when I took these. Experimenting with light, with frame, with capture. Playing with colour and shadow, playing with texture.

Blogging is an everlasting learning process, I believe. There is never something that is set in stone, and the more one learns, the better one does at what one sets out to do. I still know nothing of photography. Nor of light, or shadow. I am still learning how to get better, and work better with my camera. I'm still experimenting.

I quite like the light in these images, the way it floats through the lace, making it nearly disappear. I like the texture in some of the details as well. It wasn't thought of, I did not set out to achieve those specific effects. And that's the best part of the learning process. Sometimes you just let yourself go with the flow, and something beautiful comes out of it.

It's like reading a great book. If you allow yourself to just immerse yourself into it, forgetting your world around you, becoming the world in the book, it is a thing of beauty. And nothing is more a part of a learning process than a good book. I do believe books can teach us lessons to last us for a lifetime. 

Just recently, someone I worked with many years ago mentioned how she remembered me sitting with headphones on my head and a book in my hand. And that is so much the way I know myself. Music playing into my ears, words streaming before my eyes, shutting out the outside world, maybe a little too much. Hiding within the songs I listened to, staying safe inside the books I read. Shutting out the world. Sometimes we do need to shut out the world outside, to salvage our hearts and minds. Books are excellent hiding places, keeping us safe from what ails us, so we can stop thinking about it, and all of a sudden, a solution to problems presents itself to the mind. Books are lifesavers, don't you agree? We should all read more...