creating with materials that you grow or gather means you slow down
you work with the seasons
you wait, you watch & you listen

the more you wait the more patient you become
the more you watch the more you see
and the more you listen the more your world will tell you

it is profound

and on those days when the world seems so fucked up i want to scream
i walk in amongst our trees & know that our little world is doing ok
which means i’m ok too

DOC NZ* is running a competition on Instagram & to enter you need to post a macro photo of anything 'nature' & use the appropriate hashtag & tag them. Simple ? Yes simple !

The competition closes Sunday 23rd August 2020 & it’ll be really interesting to see what comes of it.
Most of the 2.4k posts that I’ve seen so far are photos taken by professional photographers - which is fine & understandable, especially as they have all the gear ** but what part of ‘macro’ do they not understand ? 

I don’t even know why it irritates me so much - but it does.
I think it’s the arrogance & superficiality of it all. 
The hashtag is flooded with pretty pictures; mostly birds & flowers.
They're big photos of big subjects with amazing definition & super saturated colours.
Very few are subtle, most are boringly recognisable.
Very few make you wonder.
Very few make you want to look more closely.
Very few are anything other than pretty pictures.
Very few of the photographers know the name of the thing they’re photographing - some even make stupid jokes about their beautiful subjects.
Very few are macro photos.

All my whingeing aside I have entered too.
​I have posted a couple of photos using the hashtags & the appropriate @mention.
If I get a lovely pic tomorrow, on the last day, maybe I'll post that too.
I love taking photos & I love looking with new eyes.
It's so much fun to see what you can see. 

To add insult to injury (of my ego!) the photo I posted today seems to be blurry on IG hahahaha
It's still a cool photo & is accompanied with a typical Sal style epistle.
Just to make a point.
You can only look with new eyes if you learn to & you have to want to see with your new eyes.

To be fair it's probably what DOC is trying to achieve too.

​Take care my friends - it seems this Covid19 thing is here for the long haul. 
Sal x

​ps here's a link to my IG post 

Spirals, it seems, are a universal symbol & are represented in all our creative practices & although we each diversified our media for this exhibition, interestingly, we chose to create our spirals in what could be regarded as our 'signature media & technique'.