“Putting our art out there is one of the biggest risks we can take. It’s a special kind of vulnerability. It takes guts to be an artist.”

Theresa R. Funke

With one week of summer classes to go and a mountain of assignments, tests and prints to complete, I am kind-of numb. Somehow I’m exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. Day to day I’m just trying to keep up and stay afloat, but as this semester ends, even when I goof something up and have to redo it another time, I am realizing that I’ve learned a great deal this year. I began last August as a complete novice and now I can look at some of my work and actually be proud that I did that! Of course, for every image I am proud of, there is a big ole pile of images I am completely aggravated, disappointed and annoyed with. Our instructors tell us that when sorting our photos, we should have a lot of one star images and very few 5 star images. Well, good news! I’m right on track.

For our Custom Color Printing class, I just had to create a small magazine and actually have it printed. It is far from perfect, but I am really proud of the macro photo of a bean seedling with its roots that I put on the cover. I still enjoy macro a lot and am thinking it is calling my name somehow. I am sharing the cover photo here with all the vulnerability of an artist. I hope it speaks to you. It reminds me of the lessons from grade school about the bean seed – The roots go down and the leaves go up. They just know what to do. It is in their genes. I’m hoping what I am supposed to do with my new photography skills is also somewhere in my genes and when the time comes, I will just know what to do too.