Details, details, details....

Someone once said "life is in the details".

I must confess that I had the goal at the beginning of the year to work more on my fine-art landscape photography. However, one of my "stumbling blocks" is that I felt I needed to travel to not-so-distant places such as Utah or Colorado to do my work. This self-imposed “stumbling block” has prevented me from just going out and doing photography, when there are - even in the confines of Orange County -places that can be photographed. But, for some reason, trying to capture landscapes here didn’t seem to motivate me to go out and just shoot. Then, I realized, maybe it is not necessary to photograph great vistas and landscapes. Maybe I should focus on the details.

Arguably, Ansel Adams was one of the greatest landscape photographers of the 20th century, if not of all time. His vision was truly unique, and his methodology was precise and well-disciplined. But Adams also captured great beauty and subtlety in his work, which draws folk in on many levels, both emotional and esoteric. I recall seeing a show of his work after I’d spent the summer working in my dad’s darkroom, and I had a new appreciation for the work that Adams did, and his technique. But what truly inspired me about Adams was not only his vision of the grand landscape, but the details.

And so I realized that my self-assigned project for the year is to work on details, not grand landscapes. Find the smallest details in leaves, doors, whatever is out there. I like to do detail shots, so this would be a pleasant assignment. I have procrastinated on that assignment, but plan to start soon.

So, here’s to the details….