Paying attention.

Today’s artistic challenge was to capture textures in nature using my DSLR camera. These shots were taken at Harrison Lake and Harrison Hot Springs.

I have a special love for textures. I use them to give depth and interest to my design work. Texture photos are quite different from “pictures.” For one one thing, they deliberately have no focal point. Composition is important but in a different sense. Repetition is a key characteristic.

On Flickr.com I belong to groups that contribute and share texture images under a creative commons license. These are my go-to sources for Photoshop layers when I am working on PowerPoint backgrounds. Browsing other people’s texture images is inspiring. Some are created by the artists, some are photographs of man-made objects, but none are more beautiful that the Great Creator’s handiwork.

For me, noticing and appreciating the wonderful textures in nature is soul-satisfying. If I look back through my folders and folders of photos, I see that I have a vast collection of textures because I cannot keep myself from trying to capture their beauty.