I have to say I was touched by all your kind comments and encouragement following yesterday's moan. I suppose I have yet to figure out what this PAD is all about. It's not a conventional diary for I'm not the sort of person who wears my heart on my sleeve publicly although I'm not afraid to air my views when I feel the need. I'm not, nor do I long to be, a professional photographer so it's not a shop window. I guess it's an outlet for whatever sort of creativity comes from the sometimes unholy combination of camera and keyboard, a jumble of words and images, sometimes good (I hope), sometimes bad. I want it to be fun, not a chore, but it's certainly proving more challenging that I imagined when I set out on this adventure. And it's all jammed in with the other aspects of my life as a wife, mum and journalist, even if I probably devote more time to Pbase than I should.
Much of my frustration is borne out of the lack of opportunity to take the kind of photographs that I want. I'm not a particularly technical person (that's possibly an understatement) so I'm happiest taking pics in available light which might just require a bit of tweaking in Capture NX2 or iPhoto. I probably have a fondness for taking photos of 'nice' subjects, landscape, nature, flowers, that sort of thing. While I know there's a certain school of thought which dismisses cute pictures of pets (I'd be lost without Toffee, my only resident model), etc, I'm not drawn to portraying the gritty underbelly of society, perhaps because I get enough glimpses of that through work. Whilst some people can create great art through angst and despair, I find I have to be happy or at least content in order to want to pick up my camera. So, if my images sometimes have a chocolate boxy feel to them, that's because chocolate makes one happy.
(And that's scientifically proven, so I'm told).