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After my drone batteries died, I hopped back in my car and started driving around a bit to see if I could find more spots to pull over and take pictures. Unfortunately, it was still early in the morning and there weren’t a lot of places where the roads had been cleared.

Fortunately, as I was about to give up and U turn it back home, I found a couple of these guys. It reminded me of being in Iceland. While we were visiting, we would always pull over all the time to check out the horses but in Iceland, they are wild. This guy obviously belonged to people and it seemed like he was used to visitors. As soon as I stood in front of their fence, a couple of horses spotted me and started walking over. They looked like they wanted some treats, unfortunately, I had none or else I would have given all my treats to them.

I love the way this portrait turned out. So unexpected but so fun to capture.

My camera settings for this image are F7.1 at 1/800th sec and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm.

flowers, barn, spring, winter, texture, shadows, experimenting, leesburg, virginia, va

This blog post is going to be a little different. Why? Because I just got back from a pretty awesome photo workshop. It wasn’t just any ol workshop, but it was one about expressive photography and mindfulness by the awesome Julie McCarter.

So what is mindfulness and what did I learn? To take time and really concentrate on how I feel. My first thought was, “oh man, when I wake up for sunrise, I usually just feel sleepy”. But that’s not it. Sometimes I feel like I’m dragging myself out to go take pictures and I don’t want to do it until I finally get to my location. Other times I’m SOOO excited to take pictures and theres nothing else in the world that I’d rather be doing. So that’s when the mindfulness will kick in. How can I use my own emotions and convey that in my images? Basics of photography come in handy but its also all about experimenting and trying new thing with exposure, composition and even post processing.

I always knew there had to be emotion in photography, but I kinda thought that sort of just happened all on it’s own. I never thought about how I feel and how I could portray that in my photography. When listening to Julie speak, I got really excited about the possibilities. But it also made me a little scared too. I wasn’t exactly sure why until I got home.

You see, I have a lot of exciting things that are about to happen. I mean REALLY exciting. And I can’t wait to share them with you all but at the same time these things scare me. What if I’m not good enough? or what if people start judging me?

I think the root of all these emotions and feelings have stemmed from the fact that I want to make you happy. Yes, I want to make you -my reader- happy. But the only way for me to do that is to be more honest. So from now on, I am going to try to be more mindful when I’m out shooting my photos but I’m also going to be more mindful in my blogging. I’d love to have a deeper connection with you and the only way to do that is to be myself.

So for now, love you lots! I can’t wait to see where this new way of thinking will take me and you know I’ll be back tomorrow with a brand new image 🙂