photographers – Sassy Dreams Awake

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I truly, madly, deeply love photography. I love being a photographer. I feel alive in the creative process from beginning to end.

For the last couple of years – through my ups and downs with cancer and hypothyroidism – I lost my creative drive. Most people do not realize how much energy creativity takes, especially for someone who has to measure out, sometimes selfishly, how she spends her time and energy.

I decided it was time to reclaim my creative drive and ramp it up. I have been participating in the FMS Photo a Day, a photography challenge that has a daily word (a color, food, “right now,” etc) you must snap a photo and post. I asked some friends to join me in October’s challenge and it’s been interesting to see “orange,” “stuff,” and “good vibes,” through their eyes.

Today, my friend Kim picked me up this morning and we headed out to parts unknown, to me at least. We ended up in small towns like Shiner, Flatonia, Schulenburg, and LaGrange, Texas. We’d occasionally stop, snap some photos, and continue on. It was a perfectly creative day with a good friend. I can’t ask for a more creative and satisfying Saturday.

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I can feel the creativity boiling in me now. For example, as Kim and I were talking, I noticed this reflection in her wine glass, stopped, snapped the photo, and continued talking. It’s one of my favorite shots from the day.

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Grateful for days like this! Getting my creative mojo back one day at a time.

I stumbled across this photographer recently after becoming obsessed with street photography. Vivian Maier died a couple of years ago, unaware that her photography would become an important thread in the fabric of photography in general. She left behind hundreds of thousands of negatives, prints, and film that were discovered at a storage auction. She never sought notoriety, she was just passionate about taking photographs of the world that surrounded her.

The most inspiring aspect of her photography to me is that each photograph tells a story. While I love doing abstract, nature and fine art photography, portrait/posed photography is probably my least favorite style. Street photography appeals to me because those pictures are “life as it happens,” which is my mantra when I take event photography. I pose subjects as little as possible and focus on candid interactions between people.

Today, I saw this video about the man who found her photographs and has taken on the job of restoring and showing her work. As my own style comes into focus, I am so grateful to have discovered Vivian and her legacy. Vivian was a storyteller, and that’s what I strive to be with my creative skills.

Category: photographers

CREATIVE MOJO

VIVIAN MAIER, STREET PHOTOGRAPHER