What a great way to express one’s creativity. Since I was a child, painting has been my medium. Everything around me was a vision to be expressed through paints on canvas. Photography never crossed my mind.
But I had not been painting for awhile and this energy, this unknown force within, that each one of us have, was crying to express itself somehow.
There was a little digital compact camera lying around that nobody was using, so one day I started taking pictures of each flower that was appearing around the house. The first reason was that I wanted to show my mom, with whom we had been looking after these plants, and then to keep records of these special moments of flowering that sometimes did not repeat itself, either because the plant after flowering would die, or for whatever reason the next year it would not flower, or not in the same way.
Therefore the desire to capture that unique moment, that special vision, with that special light, that only my eyes could see. I wanted to frame it there, so I could later relive it over and over again, share it with others and eventually use it for a painting. And with the camera it was so easy. I could take picture after picture until I got it right, or until the image in the camera was what my eyes were focusing on.
And so little by little I have been learning to use the camera, and picture after picture arrive at the desired result.
I never thought photography could fulfilled me so much. Painting for me was something completely different. Nature has always been my inspiration and expressing it on canvas gave it another meaning, another perspective. At least the way I paint, or used to on canvas. I could not make an exact copy, my own personal style would always predominate, willingly or unwillingly, taking me beyond the original vision.
There are of course many example over the history of Art of exceptional artists that have been able to express unique moments on canvas just like a photo, and there are many today too, and that is so remarkable, because it is not easy at all.
And maybe that is why I am falling in love with photography now, because what I am not able to express through a paint, I am now able to do it with ease and fun through a camera, at least as an amateur. Giving me a chance to learn something completely new.
The moment I have had this revelation came suddenly. With all the pictures of the flowers I was taking, I decided to use them as a background theme on the desktop computer so my mother could look at them with a big screen one by one, like a movie.
One day I was sitting in front of the computer and these pictures started shuffling through and looking at them in such detail really amazed me. Some pictures were so beautiful, they just made my heart jump, even more than when I had looked upon that same image live for the first time. And that gave me the incentive to do more, and the more I do the more I want to. It is really magical.
I will eventually continue painting because it is a totally different experience, but for the moment photography is unlocking my creativity, allowing it to express itself freely.
There are so many outstanding pictures around, highlighting every aspect of Nature that I find impossible not to be grateful to all those that work so hard to achieve such beautiful images, allowing each one of us to appreciate this great Planet of ours in all its glory.
You can see more pictures in Portfolio.
SunFreeStar 