Today I am focusing on just one letter, P. Why P, you ask? I had no Particular Purpose in choosing it for this week’s Monochrome Madness challenge to be honest. I Possibly Perceived it as a fairly challenging letter to express through a Photographic Process.
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I was never captivated by history at school. Maybe it was the dull manner in which it was taught. Maybe I was unlucky with the teachers I had, unable to bring the past to life. Or maybe it was the focus on kings and queens, generals and politicians, rather than the lives of ordinary people. Certainly it is the latter that most interests me today.
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Sri Lanka’s national flower is the blue waterlily. We saw these beautiful flowers everywhere, not just growing in lakes but also as offerings in Buddhist shrines in particular. This flower is considered a symbol of truth, purity and discipline.
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We can plan our shots as carefully as we might, but luck plays its part too. There are always factors we cannot control, from people to weather to wildlife.
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Everything captured within our photos should be there for a reason. What we leave out is as important as what we include, but we also need to be sure that our subject is clear and that our photo says something about that subject.
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Once we learn some composition techniques, we no longer need to ‘rehearse’ them in our minds before taking a photo; they become instinctive. But whether you study and follow the ‘rules’ of composition, or prefer to take a more relaxed approach to photography, there’s no denying that certain compositions are especially pleasing to the eye and impactful.
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In England we have this saying about the weather in March and years ago most of us would have recognised it as pretty accurate. But these days the weather is much less predictable it seems. This year March came in like a lamb, turned lion-like, then back to lamb for a short spell before becoming very fiercely lion until the very last day when the lamb reappeared!
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In the past there were two options. Carry a camera if you were actively out taking photos or leave it at home and risk missing a serendipitous shot. These days we don’t have to choose. We can leave our heavy camera gear at home and still grab those unexpected moments with our phones.
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I hope these images of animate and inanimate subjects found on rooftops around the world, from cats to crosses, demonstrate that it is always worth looking up while carrying a camera. You never know what you might see!
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We all know the colours of the rainbow and our imaginations can supply them even when photographed in black and white. The colours of many other photographic subjects are equally recognisable too. But when we strip out those colours and leave our imagination to fill them in, other elements of the subject, like texture and form, come to the fore.
