I had a false start this morning. I got up and wrote an exercise about the rule of odds. I was renaming all of the weekly exercises and discovered I had already given you that one. So here is my second start for today. Smiles and laughs at self. Was proud that I have gotten to sixty with this. Wow Len, how fantastic.

This exercise follows on from the article that was posted this week about learning from musicians. One of the points was about acknowledging and using the work of others as inspiration and to learn from.

This weeks exercise is hard. And is great to really get stuck into it at the moment, and is a great start to the new format.

So go and find an inspiring artwork of someone whom you admire.

I am going to choose Olive Cotton. One of her beautiful early photographs of a still life of flowers and light / shadows that pour in over a table and onto a wall from a nearby window. I hope I get some good sunny days in the week ahead for this.

I just love the light and shadows in this photograph.

Interior of my room 1933 https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/414.1997/

So I am going to play with window light. Hopefully shadows and light. Perhaps a still life and some flowers. We have beautiful lead light windows here at Willoughby so I might be able to use them.

You will have to wait to see what I post in our Community Forum at Len’s Club.

https://lensclub.discussion.community/?forum=786226

You have a number of options.

1. Firstly you have to find something that inspires you. Olive Cotton’s photograph, the Interior of my room, has been playing on my mind for the past few weeks. I have discussed this in a video presentation about the books of Olive Cotton I have here.

2. You can try and recreate the artwork as an ode (to make it an ode, title it with a reference to the original.)

3. You can play with something from the artwork (eg light or technique) that you really love.

4. You can take just some elements from the artwork and explore them.

Post your inspiration and a link to where you got it from. Write a small critique about it and why you love it or why it inspires you. It is ok to post this in our forum, as it is for educational purposes and for the purpose of critique. This is considered fair use by Australian Copyright Laws.

Remember our forum is private and only available to Len’s Club members. So it is a very good place to put your working photographs and talk about them. You may try a few times and get some feedback and suggestions before you launch into another go at doing it again better.

Tell us what you are trying to achieve.

Lets see where this takes us.

Text copyright © Len Metcalf 2020