Sometimes when I feel like my work or ideas are getting monotonous I try to think of my camera as a sort of sketchbook and think of ways I might capture ‘sketches’ of the landscape rather than more ‘representative’ photographs. I’ll try using double exposures, long exposures and/or maybe camera movement to get a different sort of feel happening.
These are a few images from a snowy winter evening when I went out to just play. No expectations or specific ideas – in my mind I was simply sketching the night and following my intuition as I experimented. I made setting adjustments as the camera gave me feedback. At times I used flash to capture the snowflakes and elements in the foreground along with exposures lasting several seconds, and at times also moving the camera to see what might happen.
In the first image you can see that I was moving my camera up and down which created light trails from a light source on the other side of the woods. A strange image but there is something about it that I find oddly appealing. Perhaps it reinforces the idea that a camera is a tool with endless possibilities and every so often I need to be reminded of this.
I wasn’t initially planning on posting these as they seemed to be more about process than result – technically they are quite noisy – but I sort of like the soft-focused, grainy look of them and in the end they really are sketches of a snowy winter night.
© Karen McRae, 2014
After a bit of warmer weather a few days ago, I noticed some of the tiny seed heads from last year had managed to make their way up through the snow for some air. I think it will be a while before any more of them show their ragged little heads; we are back to winter and that snow is still thick over the earth. I like seeing how they change over the seasons so I took a few photographs this morning as we shivered together in the wind. Happily, they are still filled with little seeds of hope. 
draw and shoot 