Last Tuesday I finally attended a meeting of the Broomfield Photo Club. I had been thinking about it for months, but the meetings were on Tuesday, the same night as yoga class.

It wasn’t at all what I expected: a small group of people sitting around a table, like a writer’s workshop. Perhaps 50 people crowded the room to hear Estes Park photographer Eric Stensland* talk about light (and about wanting to be at the Continental Divide at sunset the next day—brrr). He was quite poetic about photography, advising us to “become intimate with light.”

I had never thought of a photograph as a picture of light reflecting off something. But, of course, the word itself means “light writing.” And when he said photography was a “dance with light,” I said to myself that it’s really a record of light hitting objects that somehow throw certain colors of light back at the camera.

Stensland emphasized the importance of choosing subjects that stir our passions. (This post is beginning to sound like a romance novel.) So here are mine:

1. Small details, like part of a flower
2. Lines (similar to my taste in music: I prefer a voice and a line)
3. Signs
4. Light and shadow
5. Streets and their spectacle
6. Texture (though I’m not any good at photographing it)

* Check out his iPhone app about all the places he’s photographed in Rocky Mountain National Park.

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  2. Barbara February 5, 2011 at 11:59 am - Reply

    Beth; You are so creative. I love this site!!

  3. Beth February 7, 2011 at 8:58 am - Reply

    Barbara, thanks! That’s a great compliment!

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