Witness and be witnessed for who and what you are. ⠀
You are worthy of being the subject of your own art. It is okay to capture the process of your own becoming.
Umbrella Plant with Self Portrait and Mural
THIS WEEK I NOTICED
An act of self-love.
You are worthy of capture. Of celebration. Of admiration. You are worthy of being seen and witnessed. Of being looked at with awe and with joy. Just as you are, right now.
Here’s the thing. Self-portraiture in art is as old as time. We are proof of our own existence, our own reality, and for damn good reason. We are infinite and complex and ever changing. We are majestic and mundane. Self-portraits capture ourselves at a specific moment in time
Private reflection meets public space.
When I travel, I love finding examples of public art that has been offered for all to share. Can you find the freedom to exist in public spaces? You belong here! Have you been told that lately? Ever?
Consider, glance inward, contemplate!
Creative artists transform walls, buildings, atriums and invite us to share in the moments before moving on.
Portrait with Mural on truck
THE CONVERSATION CONTINUES
Public Art, That’s worth a Look
“Where did you see a mural you liked? Can you tell me details about it?
Take time to grow yourself, to know yourself, to love yourself.
I am always looking up to the sky. It is amazing, the changes happening above our heads and a blue sky over endless beach and ocean waves.
Vast mountains in the clouds. I love watching shifting billowing air. High above, unbelievably tall shapes of white and gray drift through the open air.
Can we know such heights and keep our feet in the sand?
Careening my neck back… Nope I cannot see the top! Wow!
Clouds moving across beach
THIS WEEK I NOTICED
Mystery moves in with the wind
A quiet in the upper air this week, silent clouds drifted with a hidden purpose and the wide blue sky is a canvas. What does it mean? A storm, a calm? I look again.
Beneath, on the ground small moments and shifting rhythm of life itself can offer opportunities riding above the clouds just out of sight. With curiosity I turn toward the approaching week.
On the beach, Eyes in the clouds
No, the forecast did not say rain, so what should I make of this sky?
Beauty and awe! Drifting down the coast towards my calm existence, I choose to watch and wait.
Clouds over waters, darkened from above
Just over head, subtle changes happen. Was that because I took time to watch?
Sometimes a cloud is just a cloud.
Robert Smith
Some days I just watch the sky as it shifts and changes knowing “such is life”.
Clouds swirling and twisting aboveUp in the Clouds, light and dark exist
THE CONVERSATION CONTINUES
Head in the Clouds
What have you discovered while looking up at the sky and clouds? Was it a rare shape—or an ordinary pattern that asked you to look again? Tell me what you noticed above.
The drifting sky and shifting clouds hold a quiet, endless secret. We only need to pause, watch, and let the hidden wonder appear.
We were walking, talking, and photographing whatever interrupted the ordinary rhythm of the street. Then something did.
A car sat along the curb with its trunk open. A spare tire stood nearby. For a moment, the scene looked less like transportation and more like a question.
Walking with a group of photographers doing some street photography when you notice someone in the actual street needing help.
A spare tire waits for its next move.
THIS WEEK I NOTICED
When the Ordinary Breaks Pattern
We move through familiar streets expecting familiar arrangements. Cars belong on the road. Tires belong on cars. Then one small disruption changes the entire scene.
Street photography rewards that interruption—the object slightly misplaced, the gesture slightly unexpected, the moment that makes you ask, “What happened here?”
Sunday with like minds
What a better way to enjoy your passion, your joy, your creativity than to surround yourselves with like-minded people.
On the third Sunday monthly, members of the Savannah Photo Club gathered for a street-photography walk. We came carrying different cameras, different ways of seeing, and the same desire to notice more. After several meetups, I have learned that the photographs are only part of the day. Conversation and community are what hold the walk together.
November 16, 2025. This week the gathering met at“The Laundry”, a local diner. Good drinks and great food in a cool diner atmosphere that was an actual commercial laundry mat back-in-the-day. Another purpose for the chosen location is to encourage and support local businesses with our presence and money. The route brings us back to where we start. The diner again offered “the perfect” atmosphere to sit and talk both before and after the walk. “A burger and fries!”, order up!
Sharpen your awareness and be prepared to act. In this case no assistance was necessary.
The walk itself allowed my attention to broaden as groups splinter and form, individuals stray from the path to discover the ordinary in plain sight.
Nothing about a spare tire is remarkable by itself. Put it upright beside a stopped car, surrounded by brick, pavement, people, and passing traffic, and suddenly it becomes part of a story.
Street photography does not always wait for beauty. Sometimes it waits for something that simply does not quite belong.
I could now keep following whatever the street offered next.
Closer, the ordinary scene becomes a story.
Savannah Photo Club: November Photowalk 2025
Observe, Then Decide
A camera should never make us less human. Sometimes the right response is to make the photograph. Sometimes it is to lower the camera and ask whether someone needs a hand.
In this case, help was already there. So I stayed an observer and let the unexpected arrangement become the photograph.
THE CONVERSATION CONTINUES
Worth Stopping For?
What have you passed lately that looked just a little out of place? Did you keep walking—or did it earn a photograph?
Sometimes the interruption itself is enough to make the familiar worth photographing.
An evening walk to the Eastern Wharf Riverwalk along the Savannah River, how nice to live so close to flowing water.
I had been watching the evening sky—the blue giving way to orange and yellow over the river. On the walk home, my attention finally dropped from the horizon to the ground. That was when I realized I had not been walking alone.
Possibly Green-spored Parasol – Toadstools
Tonight’s sunset is shared with fruitful Fungi on Friday.
Fungi remind us they support the very life and death that happens around us. Seen and unseen.
Twin Fungi river side
THIS WEEK I NOTICED
What I Almost Missed
I had gone out looking toward the river and the sky. The mushrooms were not part of the plan. They appeared only after I changed where I was looking.
Sometimes discovery is not about finding something new. It is about shifting our attention enough to notice what has been there all along.
Sunset from Mushroom Height
What a rare pairing, fungi and the fading colors of sunsets, We usually think of fungi in the woods, beneath leaves or under a rotting log not growing in the open grasses sharing the fleeting light of the sky.
Sharing the view
Golden light, viewed from mushroom heightTwo small silhouettes sharing the evening sky. A sunset I nearly walked past.
I lowered myself to the grass until the mushrooms were no longer below me. Suddenly the sunset belonged to them too.
Changing perspective did more than change the photograph. It changed what I thought the scene was about.
Sometimes the best view begins by getting lower.
By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty.
Henry David Thoreau
Fungi have been hard at work all day and deserve a stunning sunset too!
Fungi at Sunset
The sunset had been there all evening. So had the fungi. I only saw them together when I changed my point of view.
Fungi have been hard at work all day and deserve a stunning sunset too!
THE CONVERSATION CONTINUES
What might be waiting just outside the direction you usually look?
“Get down to ground level. Somethings can only be experienced when we view life from a different angle.”
Walking through Savannah’s historic district after a rain changes the pace of the street. The brick beneath my feet darkens, shallow puddles settle into uneven places, and familiar sidewalks begin reflecting things normally found overhead.
I look down to avoid the water—and unexpectedly find the sky.
I had been watching where I stepped. Then I realized I was looking at the sky beneath my feet.
We cannot see our reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
– Taoist Proverb
The sky, held for a moment between the bricks.
THIS WEEK I NOTICED
A time of reflection is always there
Walking usually turns my attention outward—to buildings, flowers, people, light, and whatever might become the next photograph. But every so often something at my feet asks me to turn that attention inward.
A reflection does not show everything. It changes with the angle, the light, and the stillness of the water. Perhaps looking at ourselves is not so different. Sometimes we need to stop moving long enough for the surface to settle.
Before the Splash
Rainwater becomes a temporary mirror. Buildings turn upside down. Clouds settle between bricks. Occasionally, I appear there too.
For a moment the ordinary path becomes two places at once—the street I am walking and another world contained just below it.
Of course, there is another response to a puddle.
Step into it.
Stamp through it.
Send the reflection flying in every direction..
For a moment, I leave the surface undisturbed.
Even the smallest puddle reflects the sky.
Robert Smith
Before you splash, look once.
Then decide..
There is something wonderfully unreasonable about splashing through a puddle. Adults are trained to avoid wet shoes, muddy hems, and unnecessary mess. Children see an invitation.
Perhaps both instincts have something to teach us. Pause long enough to see the reflection—and every now and then, step right through it...
THE CONVERSATION CONTINUES
What did you see?
After the last rain, what was reflected back at you when you looked down? And did you stop long enough to see only the puddle—or something of yourself as well?
“Even the smallest puddle reflects the sky. Sometimes we only have to stop walking long enough to notice.”
