CrankyBuddhist   the learning never ends …

I’ve created a new workshop in The ArtStudio for artists and non-artists alike:

PhotoClub is a new weekly workshop that will be held in the online learning center of artist-at-large.com. Each week on Saturday morning an assignment will be given. Participants then spend the week working on their projects and then post them to the Gallery when they are finished. Informal discussion and critique will take place among participants and group facilitator.

This new workshop is a lighter and less time consuming version of Learning to See, the other photo workshop in The ArtStudio. PhotoClub will be informal, mostly self-motivated, without reading assignments or hard critique. It will be be more about composition and less about technical issues. You can use any kind of camera – from point and shoot to dSLR, or film if you like. It is meant to be a fun workshop that will get your eyes roaming and your brain working (more than it already does!). It can also be used as a great way to get focused, get out of a composition rut, get inspired, or get working again if you’ve been lagging.

This Saturday, May 17, will be the first day. Subscriptions are sold by the month (4 consecutive weeks of workshop) for $20 and are valid for one month from date of purchase. You can start at any time, come and go by the month as you please, just by renewing your subscription, or not.

To sign up, sign in or register at The ArtStudio. Go into My Controls and look in the left sidebar for Options > Purchase Paid Subscriptions.

Photography is a great tool for learning how to see the details around you. This workshop will focus and hone your observation skills.

As I was hunting and pecking around the internet looking for grant opportunities I ran across one that had to do with photojournalism. The annual grant is awarded to one photographer whose goal is to produce a book with a topic somehow related to world peace (gaining it, living it, searching for it, whatever).

I contemplated (and still am contemplating) applying for this grant. I was trying to think of an angle where I could continue my photo series on Maya archaeological sites, which, are really peaceful.

And then I realized that they are peaceful places because no one lives there anymore.

I took this photograph in Prague two years ago. On a street that is much traveled but this little nook is probably only seen by the folks who live there or the garbage collectors. I love looking for little nooks and crannies when I travel to new places. I spent two weeks in Prague just wandering around …

I look at this photograph often, because I really like it, but also because there is something about it, something I couldn’t pinpoint until recently – a Life’s Little Dharma in photographic form.

Standing in the center, such as I was, there are two choices to move, well three if you consider standing still. One is to go up the stairs. Up, defying gravity, always a little more difficult than going down, which is the other choice. Although down has its difficulties too. Up towards enlightenment. Down towards … what? The same old thing?

If I look at the photograph in a symbolic way, up can mean up towards heaven, towards enlightenment. Up can get you into the clear blue of everything that is good and right with the world, but it takes quite a bit of effort to get there. Down just looks so dang easy, but what does down symbolize? The opposite of up? Hell (if you believe in it)? All that is bad and devious in the world? How easy is the choice of down, really? The effort of up makes up all worthwhile, right?

The cool thing about this particular spot, which makes it even more of a dharma lesson than I could ask for, is that both directions end up in the same place.

[photo c. 2007 kimberly kradel Image may not be used or copied for any purpose.]