Truest Natural Beauty

I picked up a Nikon D3500 a couple of months ago so I could begin exploring the world of photography. While I still have so much to learn, I am enjoying that I can capture the beauty of the world around me with a click.  

Growing up my family would go camping every year.  I, along with my cousins would explore the mountains that surrounded our campsite. We would lay on the forest floor and look up through the web of leaves. Follow the sound of squawking birds and hoof prints in the mud.  We also had the opportunity to witness many animals when we would play in the cool water of nearby streams. It was a very free and uninhibited feeling to explore and be at peace with nature.

I remember once on a hike I caught sight of sunlight reflecting off a small stream behind some brush.  I followed the light and found the most beautiful clearing. The way the light reflected off of the wet rocks and water, it seemed almost dreamlike and magical. At that time I was young but even then I remember thinking that would make such a beautiful painting (I always liked drawing and painting, I just wasn’t very good yet). I eagerly ran back to my campsite and grabbed my disposable camera to take the picture.  Needless to say, I was beyond disappointed because when the pictures where developed none of the magic was captured. It was just a normal clearing surrounded by a wooded area with a stream. Shortly after that, the mountain flooded and a couple of years after that it was hit with forest fires. That magical place was gone to me forever, only survived by my ever fading memory of it.

One of the beauties of art, be it painting or photography is the ability to capture a moment in time and preserve it.  To be able to save the magic of the experience, expression and raw emotions. As a youth, I was ill-equipped to capture the truest natural beauty of the world we live in, but my young self knew it was something worth being saved.  Now as an adult, I am better equipped, more knowledgeable and forever looking for moments to save and to share with anyone willing to look.

The random musings of my sporadic mind ~ Shemaine Hernandez