Every since August 2010 when my daughter, Maritza, began her college career playing soccer for UNL, I have packed my bags almost every weekend from about the second Friday in August to the first Friday in November, jetted and/or driven to Lincoln or some other college town to watch her kick it.  At the beginning of her first season, I took my camera along. I was determined to capture her moments on the field. Upon returning home late Sunday evening or early Monday morning, I would download the pictures onto my computer only to delete most if not all the pictures I took.  To say the photos were awful would be an understatement.  Eventually, I left the camera behind and hoped someone else got pictures I could snag and preserve in her scrapbook.

This year, however, Maritza’s third year, I am once again carting my camera around from university to university in hopes of securing my very own scrapbook worthy photos of her and the beautiful game. This past Friday, while staring out the window of a Southwest 737, I was rather shock to find myself thinking about my Digital Photography I class.  There I was watching the rain slide across the window when Kate’s words resonated in my subconscious: “Be creative. Take a moment to observe.  Photographs come from your life.  Overcast days are the best days to take pictures.  Always have your camera ready.”  Maaaaannnnnnnnnnn, my camera’s in my carryon bag situated in that nice overhead airlines encourage us to use. Wow, another light bulb moment.

After observing works by several photographers in class, there was one photographer and her pictures that I kept thinking about this past weekend. We didn’t discuss or examine her work but I saw them on Kate’s blog.

Julianne Kost is a photographer, speaker, author and Senior Digital Imaging Evangelist for Adobe.  She has taken pictures of some quite ordinary things, I pass by everyday, like telephone wire and with the use of her camera and computer creates some amazing photographs.  One of her beliefs is: “The computer isn’t merely a shortcut for what is possible with a camera. Instead, it’s about exploring what’s possible in no other medium and taking advantage of the flexibility and options for creative exploration.”

Julianne has written a book called: Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking.  Because of her job and expertise in the field of photography, Julianne travels extensively.  By her own admission, traveling by plane isn’t something she loves so to help her pass the time she began shooting pictures from her window seat.

One of her “rules” for being creative is: “Replace your thoughts with intuition. In design, she saids, you learn design rules and then strive to break them.  In the art world, there are no rules.  Instead of thinking about the piece, what is has to convey, what it’s ‘for,’ and why I am creating it, I just focus on what’s in front of me and follow my intuition.”

Letting go, so to speak will be challenging for me but that is one way I feel I will be able to start learning to find magic in the everyday and capture the beauty on the weekends.

So although I didn’t have my new best friend, Canon eos Rebel, beside me on the runaway, I did have my iphone and decided to take it out and snap my own Window Seat photo before the flight attendant preceded to tell me all the lovely safety features of the Boeing 737 as I began my trip to Dallas.