Summer has hit and yes, I’ve disappeared a bit from blogging.  I do have a backlog of photos to share and write about, but I’m letting a recent photowalk jump the queue!  Why?  Especially in the summer, as the heat hits and I slow down business work in order to enjoy the simple joy of being present with my family, as an introvert, I can also get crazed by the emotional drag of hearing “Mom!  Mom-mom-mom-mom-MOM!!!!” all day long and for all manner of reasons.  For my church, I led a small group of photographers on a photowalk through Philadelphia, and although it was hard to clear my schedule for it, I felt a certain amount of photographer refreshment to pull away and visually look at subjects that are not my usual jam.

In a photowalk through a city, I’m always looking for color and shape and texture.  The underlying motivation is the same for my business:  I’m looking and seeing the beautiful in the everyday and ordinary.  Do you see it?  Can I help you see the beauty in your life and space?

Below is the photo that my eye keeps coming back to.  I posted it on FB and Instagram, so forgive the repetition, but there is something my eye is drawn to.  It’s reflection and texture and color and light.  (And yes, a cute little coffee shop in Jeweler’s Row, Philadelphia).  My friend’s reflection feels like a mystical image inside the space, where you can’t always tell what is reality and what is reflection. A reflection of my emotional space.

 

Onward to more of my favorite images:  focused on color, texture, reflection, light, shadow.  Beauty in everyday objects, beauty in created objects and their decay.

 

 

A friend of mine observed this photo and noted a larger representative meaning concerning recent events in the world.

 

 

After a bit of the walk, we settled at Spruce Street Harbor Park, which is a mecca of people watching.  I’m going to admit that I have mixed feelings about posting images of strangers, but I have been deeply inspired by street photographers.  I’ve spent hours in galleries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art – mesmerized by the concept of preserving culture through photography.  Paul Strand, Dave Heath, for example, and the photographer Vivian Maier, who was the subject of a recent documentary.  There is something about capturing the beauty of a stranger, in a moment that would otherwise be unrecorded, that feels important.  Documentation of humanity.

 

 

 

As I was pulling my favorite outtakes from this photowalk, I did find it interesting that I was intuitively drawn to pairings – to relationships, humanity interacting.  Again, I think it’s the natural gravitational pull that I find myself drawn to as a photographer.  When I see humans relating, I find myself thinking, here is something beautiful that needs to be preserved.

 

The end of my walk:  light fading, light preserved.  Happy to refresh my vision and go back to a space of enjoying my own space and home.

 

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