I do I worry about my home bird tendencies.  Being at home away from the crowds is just how I like things to be but I do worry if I will become detached from the real world, whatever the real world is these days.  For the virtual world of the internet that world can be as real as the offline world with the added benefit that you can stay in bed in your pyjamas all day if that’s your thing.

Living out in the sticks on the edge of the world we rely on the internet.  And I mean rely.  For communication, for amusement and for keeping sane.   For all it’s natural beauty and new world charm there are some draw backs to living so far away but with a pipeline to the wider world you can’t quite have it all but it comes pretty darn close.

This last weekend I dipped in and out of an free online photography workshop with one of the world’s top photographers and yes, I admit I was still in bed in my pyjamas but I don’t think that David duChemin would have minded one bit.  I didn’t hear all the workshop but the bits I did were right up my street – finding your vision as a photographer.  The key thing I learned is that you have to have a view on the world that you want to communicate and then you do it to please yourself first and foremost.  All the gagetry won’t give you that, though it might help to communicate more effectively what you want to say.

The other lesson I learned was that if you can’t find your vision in photography – you’re just being lazy.  You’re just not trying hard enough.  Ouch – that hurt!

Amongst all the talk of being creative – finding your vision and honing your craft – there was some clear practical suggestions about how to be an artist with a camera.  I’ve got to fully digest what that means for me but staying at home or online is not going to make me a better photographer.  No, as I’ve bleated before, I need to get out a lot more. But for now I’m happy to share life as it really is for me.

House and home.

And bassets – the painfully slow walking speed kind.

And the kind that can run when you mention dinner……

And nature all around us, whatever the season.

When we set off on our adventure to the other side of the world we really didn’t know how things would turn how.  We had an idea – a vision – of how we’d like things to be.  I certainly didn’t know that I’d be a blogger and a photographer so for all the goal setting and vision making it’s always good to allow for a little of the real world, whatever that might be, to shine a little light in a dark corner and realise things that you might not otherwise have seen.