Embracing the Creative

Those of you who have been following my two blogs for a while or who have read my ‘about’ pages will know that I originally set up The Dorset Rambler in order to bring together my passion for Dorset, walking, cycling, nature/the outdoors, and photography in a way that would hopefully interest and entertain the reader. So it usually comprises articles about these subjects. But that posed a problem!

You see, I have always resisted being put in a particular box or being typecast as one particular style of photographer e.g. a landscaper or whatever. Yes. I take landscapes because I am out in the countryside a lot but I am not solely a purist landscape photographer. I actually enjoy all forms of photography; landscape, street photography, portraits, macro, conceptual photography, or frankly the out and out experimental and creative.

The danger with this is that you may be seen as ‘jack of all trades, master of none’, or that followers may not be interested in half of the posts. People who like my Dorset posts for instance may not be interested in my more creative based posts. Does this matter? I’m sure that some would say that it does and that to increase your following and keep your readers you need to specialise and have a constant theme rather than generalise as then people will know what to expect. Then again, I guess that depends of the view of individual readers as some might actually prefer variety rather than continuity or sameness. Its a bit of a conundrum that I haven’t really bottomed out yet – how tight or how loose should a brief be in order to keep the blog interesting to the readers?

In part, that conundrum is where Time to Reflect came from – it was an attempt to at least partially separate out the more creative/reflective posts from the straight Dorset/walking posts in an effort to tighten the brief more whilst also allowing me to share all types of posts.

Anyway, today I thought I would share a picture that originally featured on The Dorset Rambler but definitely fits in the creative category and it is all about Embracing the Creative, albeit it was taken in Dorset and in the outdoors, and features a tree so does fulfil some of my Dorset Rambler criteria……sort of 🙂 ! I called it ‘Forestry Man’!

Forestry Man

I actually went walking along the River Stour and I carried my tripod as I thought some long exposure shots of the river might work well. Having taken some typical landscape shots though, I decided to have a play and get creative and this shot is one of the results. You see, we are all part of the created world, whether human, animal, tree, plant, bird or whatever and at the end of our time here, our bodies return to dust. So, in reality, is there much difference between us and say a tree when considered over millennia? Well of course, we have a soul so the end is not the end for us, but the body and the tree aren’t dissimilar really – we are both part of a greater whole and will eventually age and erode and disappear. I’ve tried to show that in this picture.

On a technical note, I guess I could have sandwiched two separate images together to get this effect, but I didn’t, this was all done in camera by using a long exposure.

If you are one of my ‘Dorset’ or ‘landscape’ followers from The Dorset Rambler, then you can of course just ignore my creative/reflective posts now that they are on a separate blog.

But hey, why not Embrace the Creative?

Thanks for visiting Time to Reflect and for reflecting with me.

(All words and pictures on this site are copyright of Terry Yarrow and must not be reproduced without permission)

Advertisement