Every photographer knows that it’s all about the light.  Our craft would be nothing without it. Whether it is a hard light creating shadows and drama or bright, dazzling light that give eyes that sparkle we love, or soft, romantic light that makes skin glow.

I went out the other morning in search of the light. That sweet, golden light that has this peaceful, zen-like quality that reminds me how the world is born anew with every single sunrise. It’s like going to church for me;  meditational, reflective, renewing, connecting.

Sometimes I create an image where the light is perfect but something else isn’t. I want to recreate it. The same place at the same time on a different day is NEVER, EVER the same. Even when I go so far as to wait an entire year to recreate it. It’s more technical and time-consuming than the viewer would even believe to recreate a scene that stole my heart and got away from me that won’t let me rest until I recapture it. I have a few of those images that escape me.

I didn’t find what I was looking for that morning, but I found this.  It was a split second. I almost missed the whole thing because I didn’t see or hear the runner come up behind me and silently pass me as I held my camera to my eye and studied the pink and gold sunlight as it swallowed up the road. It was captivating. And as I waited, hoping he would move to the middle of the road, a doe sauntered across his path as if to say ‘I was here first”. This is probably all hard to see in this tiny image here but I just wanted to share.  Once again, I am reminded how much I love Michigan, its countryside, and my tiny neck of the woods!

The new J. Love Photography newsletter is posted!  If you aren’t on our mailing list to receive the newsletter, just add yourself here on the right. In our monthly contest,  Mary Ann Riehle was the first one to find and correctly answer the question buried in the newsletter! She wins a $20 gift certificate to the new restaurant that opened in Dexter; Red Brick !

Please check out our J. Love Photography September Newsletter and let us know what you think!

Time for some fun! I love contests.  But I don’t do things like the lottery.  Chances are too slim to win!  But the chances are really good with this contest.  So check it out.

Post I’m a fan of J. Love Photography on J. Love Photography’s Fan Page to win a $100 credit towards ANYTHING J. Love Photography offers from creative sessions to portrait prints to jewelry to framed fine art prints! One post will be selected on 9/30 to win!

Feel free to post a msg along with I’m a fan of J. Love Photography, but those words must appear exactly as I have them typed here. Visit my fan page now and create your post for your chance to win.  J. Love Photography Fan Page

Solitary Sunrise

As an artist and photographer, it’s very difficult to leave my art when the ‘mojo is flowing.’ I have several clients waiting for images, albums to design, a mound of paperwork on my desk.  But I’m on day three of a sinus infection and my brain is cloudy, my ears are totally plugged, my energy is low, and I feel awful.

Yet, here I am at my screen.  I need to sweep myself off to a place of peace by revisiting something or some place I’ve been where I connected with that place within myself.  It’s my form of meditation.  My intent here is not to create fine art to sell or to even show.  I do it for me.  But this image gave me such a sense of peace I had to share it.  I’ve talked to so many other people in ‘not so good’ places in the last several days.

If you’re experiencing a blue day, an off day, a sad day, a time where everything feels wrong… imagine yourself as this person wading through the still waters at daybreak.  Know peace.  As someone said…

‘Listen to the wisdom of the earth to find your ground again.’

Namaste