{ An Artist's Heart -- How Do YOU Interpret the World Around You? }

{ How Do YOU Interpret The World? }

This one is for all of you photographers out there:

How do YOU interpret the world around you?

What do YOU see through your lens?

How do YOU want to edit your photos and present them to clients?

What feelings do you want to evoke?

Have 10 artists stand in front of the same bowl of fruit and each one will interpret something different when they see it and re-create it in their work.

One may see the textures of the fruit, while another may see and want to emphasize the mass.

Another sees the colors, while another sees the arrangement in the bowl.

I believe that the same is true with photography. As photographers, we all have something very different to bring to the table. We all see things through different filters (and I'm not talking the camera kind--I'm talking the heart, the mind and the imagination kind).

You can take the same picture and interpret it different ways, depending on what emotions you want to evoke, what thoughts you want to stir, what feeling you want to create with your work.

How you see the world colors how you take photographs and how you interpret them to your clients.

Taking that same tree in the above pictures, this is how I personally chose to interpret the tree I found on a chilly day last week:

It was chilly, but not icy. But something about the bareness of the tree reminded me of the frost that we had in Arizona a few weeks ago and how everything seems to have died since then. I chose to bring blue hues into my photo because something about blue-gray reminds me of the snow and that biting chilliness you feel in the air when it's very cold out.

I've just interpreted something I've taken a picture of.

I could have interpreted it differently and put a different spin on things, but chose to interpret it this way this time.

How would YOU have interpreted it?

The beauty is that you probably would have interpreted it differently than I did. That's the beauty of being an artist. You can choose how you want to present something to others. We each see the world through our own pair of filtered glasses and bring something different and special to the table.

I'm glad that we're all different.

That's what makes photography special. What brings different clients to different people. They are attracted to the way you interpret them, their surroundings and their special events. As photographers, we are all artists and use our cameras and other equipment as our "brushes." The people or things that we shoot suddenly come alive on the canvases of our images and we have the privilage of capturing them in a way that no one else can.

That's why I became a photographer. Because I can be an artist and express my heart and my soul, not in a sketch or painting, but with real people, during a real moment and represented in a way that's unique to my own self. One of the biggest compliments I ever receive is when people tell me, "I like you and sought you out because you're different."

I want to be different.

I want you to be different too.

We each have something special and unique to bring to our craft.

Be true to who you are as a photographer and digital artist and let us be blessed and inspired by what makes you and your work uniquely "you."