In 2008, I have resolved to be more scholarly (that would be -- less goofy), and this will be a first attempt for our blog, Kodak's 1000 Words or KTW.  It is very scholarly and anti-nerdly to assign a TLA (three letter acronym) so obfuscation potential is maximized.  My thesis for this blog posting is that form and line present in Nature makes for some awesome images.  Learning to recognize the forms and lines may not come naturally though. 

I've been practicing and studying Nature Photography, intermittently, for a few dozen years and, after some retraining last Summer, I am finding it easier now to see form and line.  Last July, I had the opportunity to participate in a nature and environmental photography workshop with Gary Braasch in Maine.  He's a seasoned, professional nature photographer with a photojournalistic bent and also a great workshop leader.  Being with him (most days starting around 3:30 AM), helped me understand the elements of a scene and see how light was intersecting with the forms and lines. It was probably about 20 years ago that I first realized how artists such as Freeman Patterson work to interpret form and line in nature.  He visited Rochester to lead a seminar sponsored by the Kodak Camera Club and provided many of us some true artistic inspiration. But enough of this blah-blah and chatter;  Show not Tell:

Vertical trees splashed with fall color.

The all-important horizontal... keep it on the level!

Forms surrounded by water emerge from the ocean or a local stream.

The lens will do the work. For these, I used wide angle to capture the whole scene.

To focus on detail lines and forms, the close focus zoom or macro works.

And this one was taken about 24 hrs after the one above, a temporary thaw, crystals to droplets, lines to forms.

This one is a fiddle on the computer. Any guesses as to what the original subject was?

Well after-all, most resolutions don't survive the first month of the year and who says scholars can't be goofy?  

Oh yeah,  and don't forget the owl (photo credit, the Bird Nerd).

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