Less is more ...

 I have to admit I'm an avid photographer ... not a professional by any means, in fact I rarely venture off the auto setting.  I get caught up in the moment and the vision in front of me and I tend not to let technology get in the way.  Plus it's more to learn about and for now I am happy enough with my pics and I have too much on the to do list as it is ... 

However I do take way too many photos and I can't bring myself to delete my huge collection.  It's a case of you never know when you may need that photo and really how much space do they really take up?  After all, it's digital technology these days.

 Well it appears they take up too much space.  On my computers that is ... it's time to store them externally on a huge capacity external hard drive and then backup up onto another external in case the first one self destructs.    Thank goodness they aren't hard copies or we would need a bigger house.

One would think then that the current assignment would be easy for me ... it's Working from Photographs.   I have spent the last couple of weeks looking at my wealth of photographs ... I hate to admit they are up in the many thousands ... but rather than offer a wide choice it has literally done my head in.  It has been whirling with ideas - I think at last count at least eight possible options for composition.

I only wish the garden looked like this right now so I could remedy the lack of botanical information on my flower pics ... sadly it is a bare naked garden bed - it's coming to the end of winter here in Western Australia.  Soon the garden will start to spring back to life but a little too late for this assignment.   

A familiar sight to my family ... camera at the ready

I also realised I love to take photos but if I want to be a botanical artist and use these photos for reference material I need to show more elements in the photo - clear images of the stems, branches, leaves, petals, stem attachments etc.  Rather than just a pretty flower head.  It's not of great importance to anyone else but a flower pic is not much good to a botanical artist without all the plant information and botanical structure.  Lesson learnt and I will be starting a more detailed library ... more or less :)