Len's Journal

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Nearly a year ago

I leave my work as long as I can to mature before processing and really looking at it. This is so I can let go of the many disappointments I have when I first see my work. There are so many. This isn’t right. That’s not good enough. That wasn’t what I was trying to do. Overly critical. My left brain kicks in. It rationalises and critiques. It looks for problems and issues.

This photograph was taken eleven months ago on my trip with Cyan. We were going to walk the overland Track in Tasmania but a unfriendly weather pattern was building. Each day in the lead up it slowly deteriorated. The forecasts we’re predicting a storm. So I abandoned our plans to start the walk and stayed on in the cabin we had for a few extra days.

We woke up to so much snow that had fallen without wind overnight. We raced outside and Cyan and I photographed all day. It was magical. Thick snow in the rainforest and in the more open eucalyptus forests too.

I found this one in that shoot yesterday, popped it on social media and people loved it. You see that is another thing I can’t predict. Which photographs, of my own, that go well in the eyes of others. It is good when someone else curates my work.

So this beautiful photograph reminds me of both these things. To give my work time. And to listen to others. Well listen to what they love. And not what they don’t. This one will probably make a good marketing shot as I seems to have wider appeal than others.

Packing today and presenting tonight. Am already up to the eighth composition presentation. Tonight’s one is on figure / ground. I am increasingly proud of what I am putting together in terms of a wonderfully educational treatise on photographic composition. Detailed and comprehensive. Something to be proud of. I have been loving writing new material for it too. It’s worth joining Len’s Club just to watch it. In my humble opinion. Actually it’s worth joining for so many other reasons too.

https://www.lensschool.com/workshops-tours/learn-visual-composition-workshop

Away next week, so will be quiet I suspect. Hoping for a day like this one was. You have to be there to get one. Fingers crossed for us.

Gum in the snow. Cradle Mountain. Tasmania. Photograph and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2020