Sunday Walk

I finally managed to force myself to go for a Sunday walk today. It's not that I don't like walking. On the contrary, I love going for walks, especially in the woods (and of course on the beach, but that's not much of an option here). But I just usually end up having too many other things to do instead. Or rather, making different priorities. In order to help me get back into a Sunday walk habit, I made a list of benefits, to give it some purpose, such as looking for inspiration for sketches and paintings, and capture beauty in the ordinary with my camera. I've been neglecting my DSLR camera far too much since I got my iPhone, usually using it mostly for holiday pictures. So today, I decided to use my little 50mm lens instead of my everyday 17-70mm zoom lens, in order to get a different perspective. 

With it's option of an aperture of f/1.8, the 50mm lens allows you  to capture a terrific depth of field, and, according to light, some fabulous bokeh.

I walked along some beautiful flowering meadows. Who would have thought that common little wild flowers can be so fascinating?

And trought the woods. Unlike the woods in England, where many of them are filled with carpets of bluebells at the moment, the woods here are rather bare of flowers, and instead present mainly a lush green.

The weather kept changing from minute to minute, but except a very short little shower, the weather stayed dry, and there was even sunshine as well! It was rather windy, though, which made focusing rather challenging at times.

Some of the rhododendrons (or azaleas, I never really quite know what the difference between them is) in some front gardens where in full bloom and just totally amazing.

And I even found some bluebells in a grassy patch outside a block of flats.

To capture this little fellow, my allround zoom lens, which has quite a good macro function as well, would of course have been perfect. But then that's the challenge; to work with what you've got, and make the best of it. I think he turned out rather well.

What I love about photography is how it allows you to chose how you look at things. Some of the pictures were taken at places that were not exactly the most picturesque. The gras strips between the pavement and the main road, road, on traffic islands etc. But even in those places, beauty can be found, if you care to look for it. And your camera allows you to focus on just that beauty, and to block out there rest. It allows you to capture and elevate the ordinary, to decide for yourself how you want to look at things, what perspective to choose, and on what to put your focus on.

I really enjoyed my little walk, and 'll definitely try to go for a little Sunday walk again next weekend, and make it a regular habit. But I'll better try not to take 220+ photos again - or I'll end up spending all day with downloading and editing them, and won't have any thime for painting, or anything else, at all.