Playing with Light & Colour

They made us shoot roses in a walled classroom. Yuck! I loathe roses. They're ugly. And to waste film and focus on them is worse. Then we had to shoot each other. Some have the knack of shining before the lens, natural, glowing, beautiful. But it doesn't seem to awaken interest. It's monotonous. The same countenance, scarcely varied expressions. Dull!

The authorities took us far out and flung us into the arms of nature. "Go. Click whatever you want. Anything that seems amazing to you." And we went, the weight of the SLR a familiar friend by now; notebook and pencil ready, to scribble aperture and shutter speed details. The freedom felt like five pegs of vodka. I stole for myself the colour of leaves, the formation of petals, the bark telling its own story, the terrified chameleon, the swirling clouds, the stream snaking its way through the emerald carpet, the innocence of the young, the raw power of water, the lone wooden idol, the laughter on wrinkled faces, the fowl couple cosy in a corner, the shades of fibre, the bright red and green of freshly washed chillies, the potter's hands shaping life, the blacksmith's hammer poised to beat the docile metal, the forsaken wheel resting by a hut.

I stole it all. And everytime I go out there, I'm never disappointed. I always find something new that galvanises me to pull out my weapon and capture, for the human memory is hungry. The orange leaf penetrated by yellow rays, the tiny red beetle scuttling about the forest floor, the glistening grandeur of the ghost tree. How can one not stop, gape and click?