[extra]ordinary things

For the last several weeks I've been teaching a photography class to a couple friends on Tuesdays (more on that in a future post), and tonight we took a break from the classroom (I think heads were about to explode from f-stops, shutter speeds, and exposure compensation talk) and went on a little field trip.

We piled in the car and went down to a rather nondescript football field and playground area at the school down the street to do an exercise on 'seeing'. There are amazing things all around us that we overlook every day because they are so common with seemingly little visual interest, so the objective was to try and look at these things from a different perspective - to 'see' them for what they could be. It was actually a lot of fun and I hope to keep doing it on a regular basis to expand the creativity and train myself and others to look at things from a new view point.

This was one of my favorite images from tonight - a simple bench on the sideline of the football field where players sit. In general, probably not considered a very exciting subject, but from a different view point and with a little punch of color, I think this image has a very interesting feel to it.

So, as we finish out the rest of the week, I encourage and even challenge each of us to turn off the auto-pilot switch, open our eyes, and take a minute to see the [extra]ordinary things all around us. Enjoy the view.