“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”
Ansel Adams

Sunday morning I woke to an amazing view of frost on the trees. Other than taking pictures of my jewelry for inventory purposes, or to list for sale at Artfire or Etsy, I don’t take many photographs, but I was definitely inspired by the lacy beauty of the frosty trees, so despite the frigid temps I put on the layers and headed outdoors.

We have a windmill and some outbuildings not far from the house, and though the windmill is no longer working, and we aren’t using the well, either, I decided it would make for an interesting focal point, since it is flanked by two big trees. I took the photo, and then I thought of Ansel Adams and his glorious black and white photos, some of which feature frosty trees. So here’s the shot of the windmill between the trees–after I changed it to black and white in Photoshop, of course. The fun thing I noticed is that editing the photo and making it black and white caused the outbuilding on the left and the water storage tank on the right to darken, creating two anchors, like the bottom two points of a triangle, which corresponds with the top point, which is the windmill wheel. Love when those accidents happen.

After that, I took pictures of the leftover coil of barbed wire hanging from a fencepost, and the top of a fencepost itself, because the cracked and checkered texture of the old juniper post contrasted so nicely with the lacy skirt of frost clinging to the wire.

I posted the windmill photo to my personal profile on Facebook, saying something like: “I’m no Ansel Adams, but the frost in the trees inspired me to go black and white.” The photo generated lots of likes and comments, but my favorite was the one by my writer friend Janine:

“Ansel wasn’t Ansel–until he was.”

That’s a funny way of saying something pretty profound, when you think about it. Though I don’t intend to change my creative focus to photography, the truth remains that no matter what we choose to do in life, we have to start somewhere. Ansel certainly did; I’m sure he wasn’t born taking perfect and beautiful pictures. So we shouldn’t let the fact that we don’t measure up to some creative icon–an icon who’s had years of practice and dedication–make us feel uncertain or embarrassed to spread our creative wings on occasion and fly somewhere we don’t usually fly. Being creative should be fun. I certainly enjoyed my little creative departure!