This has been a week for family and friends. My younger daughter and eight-month-old grandson came for a nearly a week. After a visit with one of her friends in DC, we headed straight to the Outer Banks. The weather here was wonderful until the last day, when it blew like a bat out of the proverbial hell. Still, it was sunny, so we could not complain. It just wasn’t good weather for walking on the beach. We spent Friday morning at the Urgent Care clinic, as Hayden had a high fever. It turned out to be strep, quite unusual in such a young person, but we got the meds, and I have heard from his parents back in Colorado that he is quite recovered.

Photo Rut
A photographer friend wrote us recently, frustrated at being in a photo rut. I wrote him back the following:

“I have an exercise for you. Go out to some nearby location, and make one perfect image. This will force you to previsualize what you want from the image. You can compose and recompose, change your lens, your viewpoint, your intended treatment, but only make that one image. I think that sometime in the excitement of a location, we don’t take the time to make that beautiful image.

“Before you go out, look at Rembrandt, Chardin, Edward Weston, John Sexton, Ernst Haas, Frans Lanting, Bob Krist, etc. and get inspiration.”

I can’t wait to see the results of some of these outings. Sometimes in this digital age, because we no longer have to hear chink-a-chink-a-chink-a-chink every time we click the shutter and worry about film and processing costs, it is easy to shoot too much. Arnie might disagree with this, but I think that if we all slow down and really think about the image we are going to create, we will end up with more winners and fewer ho-hums or losers. Of course, Arnie claims all of his are winners! Hmmm! For those of you who know him, you can just imagine the expression on his face when he delivers this line!

Marlboro Window, as I call the photograph above, is the only one I did of this window. I studied it, then carefully composed. This is a photograph that has attracted a lot of favorable comments over the years. So has Wooden Grill towards the bottom, another case of one scene, one shot!

Exhibit Closing
On Friday, we had the closing reception for our photo exhibit in Durham, NC. Almost 40 people attended on a dark and stormy night, so we were really pleased with the turn-out.

Fine Art Photography Pages
Some of you who live too far away to see the show asked if we could post something. With this blog and our latest newsletter, we are launching our Fine Art pages with this official announcement. PayPal and shopping carts will come, hopefully in the next week or so! One never quite knows for sure on these things.

Speaking Engagement
We have also been asked by the Raleigh Academy of Chinese Language Photo Club to do a photography seminar. This group sponsors a lot of programs for the parents of their students as well as the public at large. We are quite pleased to have been invited as guest speakers! The program, Creativity and Seeking Your Own Vision, is Saturday morning, March 21, 2009, 9:30-11:00 a.m. at:

Room E300
Forest Hill Baptist Church
201 Dixie Trail
Raleigh, NC 27607

It is free and open to the public. We hope to see some of you there!

Make Your Dream Assignment
Many of you have received an e-mail from us regarding our effort to stay in the top 20 and preferably get into the top ten for a Dream Assignment contest. We thank all of you who have contributed votes and comments, and we apologize for the site’s unfriendly nature.

We rewrote the instructions to make it easier in case you did not have a chance to vote and comment and/or pass it on to friends.

We have long had a dream of doing a photographic book on Beautiful Bourgogne (Burgundy), and we are asking everyone for help, not only to vote and comment but to pass the word on… and on… and on. The link is at https://www.BCphotoadventures.com/DreamAssignment.php.

Comments from you are always encouraged and welcomed. If you do not see the “Leave a Reply” box below this article, it’s probably because you are still on the Home page. In that case, click on the Comments link at the end of all the tags just above “Older Posts” at the bottom of this box or just click on the article title at the top and the “Leave a Reply” box will appear down at the bottom.

Remember, you don’t need to be a WordPress member to do so. Even if you choose not to do that, we hope you will share this blog and our website with your friends and relatives who love photography.

Meanwhile, check out our Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures calendar of workshops, and if you are considering joining us, do as others have already done … make your room reservations. You can always cancel later if necessary! We have added a Wish List section to our Calendar.

Some of our alumni have expressed interested in our putting together workshops both in Spain and at Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks. If we get enough interest, we will add one or both to our schedule.

If you want to be added to our newsletter list (we send them out about once a month), write us through the Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures contact page.