LittlePurpleCow Photography

I attended the Atlanta Photography Group Open Review last night. As much as enjoy connecting with creative souls and studying their images online, there's something quite magical about looking another photographer in the eye and listening to the thought process behind his/her lens. There's a vulnerability you can't pick up in the form of pixels. I didn't plan to share my work, but in the end, I felt compelled to do so. It feels good to be open. To share. In return I got the advice I needed to hear from a very wise man: Be honest. Don't seek the approval of the viewer to guide your art. Look within.

Down the road there's a field of dark sunflowers, wilted and dry. "It's sad," she said as we drove past it. 

When I first noticed the field earlier this summer, I made a mental note to stop and shoot the sunflowers while they were in bloom one day. Planted in neat rows their slender stalks stood so high, reaching for the sun with heavy crowns of gold. A stunning view. I knew they wouldn't last. Yet I never stopped.

She walked into the gym and plopped down on the bench in the area where we parents wait for our little ones. I've seen her before. She wears strappy little tops and tight jeans and as you can imagine, she's very difficult to miss in a room of moms that look like middle-age moms. I sat in my chair heads down in American Photo and when I glanced up and to the right, I caught this view. I don't normally ask people I don't know if I can photograph them, but I'm pushing myself these days. So after I snapped this shot, I sat down beside her on the bench and learned that her husband died just four months ago. And that her five-year old daughter misses her dad. And that just beyond this sexy exterior... is a gentle soul.