Fun photos and hanging out with my inner child

Posted on May 16, 2017 by Su Leslie

Image: Su Leslie, 2017. Edited with Snapseed.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
— George Bernard Shaw

For me, photography is play.

I have no-one telling me what to shoot; or how and when. I don’t make money from it (although I’d like to one day). The only constraints on me are time, light and my imagination.

The shot above is pure play. Not just the messing about with an onion, a smartphone and some tinfoil (now there’s a sentence you don’t often see), but the afterwards playing — the electronic doodling with photo-editing apps.

Diane Ackerman said “play is our brain’s favorite way of learning”, while the psychologist Jean Piaget offered this advice about creativity:

If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.
— Jean Piaget

Written for Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge at Lens and Pens by Sally

Wordless Wednesday: as kids grow, so do parents

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Su Leslie

First photo of the Big T and our boy-child. Back then parenting was all encompassing and frankly, a bit overwhelming.

A few months ago, before the boy-child's school ball. These days parenting is more about learning how to let go.

A few months ago, before the boy-child’s school ball. These days it’s more about learning to let go.

Illusion of infinity

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Su Leslie

“the road goes on forever.”

New Zealand is a fairly sparsely populated country with, unsurprisingly, a strong road culture. We used to have a passenger rail network, but outside of Wellington and Auckland and a couple of tourist routes, not so much now.

We build roads as a major economic activity. Roads to provide employment, drive “growth”, let people spend more time in their cars trying to go to the biggest, newest shopping mall.

We call ourselves clean and green, yet tear up and reshape huge swathes of our landscape as housing estates, roads, retail parks, dairy farms. We take land out of food production and lose it forever. We treat the natural world as though it were infinite.

It’s not.