Misadventures in Inspiration!

I am not sure everyone considers what I do an art, but I for one do. Gardening, cooking, healing, writing, completely non professional photography, these are both my calling and my artistic outlet. I read in a book a while back about artists dates. These are dates with your self, your inner artist, doing things and going places that feed your creativity. For me these can include the Columbus Museum of Art, Frankling Park Conservatory, I have gone to Cleveland, Chicago and many other places to visit and feed my yearning for knowledge, beauty and art. I try to do these little trips once a month.

This morning started with a plan to take myself on an artist date, I wasn't sure what form that would take so I put it out into the universe (and facebook) for suggestions. I ended up planning on going to the Hocking Hills to commune with nature.

I prepared myself with a shower, put on my "adventure" pants (that is what I call my North Face cargo pants), collected my journal, my Petersons field guides and I was off...oh wait, I need my camera...cuz you cannot go on an adventure without it. It was not in my bedroom (and I tore it up looking for it), it wasn't in the work room where it normally is (again with the tearing up). In fact it was nowhere in my house to be found. Where in the world was my camera...perhaps it was in my car...more tearing, no camera...well I must have left it at work...I can swing by on the way out of town, pick up the camera and be off....ummm, nope. I came back home and tore up the house once again...no camera, well I either left it in the garden the last time I took pictures (in which case it would be water logged....and um, no it was not there) or I left it at the coffee shop, library or the thousands of other possibilities....ugh!

I really liked this camera, it was small but powerful, took great pictures with it's 7.1 megapixel goodness, it was easy to upload...we are not happy! I eventually resigned myself that the camera was just gone. After all, it was 6 years old and I had been thinking about a new camera...perhaps my artist date will be shopping for a new camera.

I stopped at 3 places this morning, I looked at some schmancy SLR cameras which candidly I think will just set themselves up on the tripod, take the shots for you...they will probably drive to the destination for you...you can probably just stay home...but they do come with a hefty price tag. I am in no way a professional photographer, I take pictures of my garden and in the woods...sometimes I take pictures of things in my house, I am not sure I need something you take along on Safari when covering it for National Geographic.

After some additional comparison shopping I decided on a pretty schmancy Nikon digital camera, it is the camera just below the SLR class, can has standard settings as well as can be customized for pretty much any kind of picture taking you want. With a fancy memory card, stylish carrying case and batteries I was out of the store and out several hundred dollars. That's the bad news....the good news was it was still early enough to go on my date so I headed down to the Hocking Hills, took a 10 mile hike and took hundreds of pictures....they will be featured in a later blog post. I felt awed by nature and complete inspired!

Oh, and above is a picture of my new camera, case and accessories (and a bit of one of my cat's tail)....taken with my old camera, I found it about 5 minutes after getting home from my adventure...grumble grumble

Happy Gardening!