Ah Egidio you present us with an interesting theme this week for the Lens-Artists Challenge with the word “Rejected”! Be sure to check out his inspirational post HERE.

Given that I am into the emotional side of essential oils, I looked up the word Rejected – its an interesting word in life and in photography, especially with digital photography.

Emotionally, Rejected aligns with these emotional oils: Rose, Lavender, Birch, Marjoram, Myrrh, Cinnamon, Clary Calm, Amavi, Whisper and Cedarwood.

Affirmation: I now know I am worthy of belonging and inherently lovable.

Walking through grief this past year, Ive realized has also brought forth a form of this feeling. When reading through the questions to look deeper: “What will it take for me to heal from this experience and accept that it doesn’t define me?”. As the older sibling of 4, grieving my little brother, just 2 years younger than me, the past year has completely changed my life and in a sense this word has come up. Part of this process is rejecting how you do not want to feel, or how someone may look over you to ask how your parents are doing. Either way, spiritually and photographically this word aligns. As well as the flip side of Rejection… Acceptance.

Rejection to Acceptance can be tumultuous in life, but also a necessary step. One that can pull on all the heart strings and push you to your limits. Photography helps take me to those limits, helps take me out into the world when a part of me wants to stay hidden.

Digitally, the beauty of photography you can take and take and take and whatever doesn’t work can easily be deleted. When emotions can be involved, this can be the best, not so much rejection but reassurance. I am the type of photographer who thinks about the shot and makes it, vs rapid fire that many boast these new cameras are so much more capable of doing – Im still that photographer who will think about the shot and shoot conservatively!

Sometimes as photographers we can be more critical of our own work than we should be, perhaps this is a perfect theme to help remove that self-criticism!

Yesterday, my husband and I rode over to our daughters afternoon hockey game, its about a 30 min drive by vehicle, it took us about 1.25 hours by snowmobile – given that half the trail there was rough! As we were riding over I realized I hadn’t looked up the challenge yet, after we left the arena to head home I realized I still hadn’t looked at the challenge yet. On our way home, my husband let me lead to stop and take photos when I wanted. There were multiple times I had to stop and he had to re-direct me but it was great! I felt inspired, almost like an internal knowing that whatever the theme was, I would achieve it! We arrived home and that was the first thing I did was look up Egidio’s challenge!

I normally would have deleted this image, with only part of a ski in it and the angle, it wouldn’t have been a keeper – however with this challenge, I am embracing. I had to stop to take this because of the depth of the fence posts in the snow!

This is one I would have deleted, for sure, Ive learned when photographing on the go, I have to be open to rejection – open to not keeping them all. Embraced not hitting delete and converted this into a monochrome black and white image. Looking back on the snowmobile trail, as some riders were coming up behind yes, a slight pause to allow them to go around and past us.

Once they went past us, I converted a couple into black and white and a sharper clarity image – with the thought in mind of being open to not rejecting.

As I had a few of these images to work with, I also processed in colour clarity.

This one, if I had looked at the back of my camera when shooting, it would have been deleted, Ive worked hard at leaving the images on my camera until they get on the computer to cull and process through. This is exactly what I was attempting to achieve – I looked over and saw the signs behind my husband, I honestly didn’t think I captured this.

Then when I did get ‘the shot’ this also would have been rejected in my first look.

I was going to process this into black and white, however that would take away from the blue of the snowmobile trail signs and the orange of the trail posts.

The trees above was a duplicate image, again one I would have deleted but I kept the ‘Rejection’ word in mind and processed this image to black and white. I love riding through the woods and seeing the snow softly laying on the trees. I had quickly shot upwards so its not all sharp either, I am learning to embrace and let go of the protectionism aspect!

Why would I have rejected this initially, the angle of the trail, around the tree thats blocked by the tree. I am grateful I kept this one, there is a bit of mystery within this image of the trail going off to the right.

Thank you Egidio for this inspiring post with ‘Rejection’ in mind. Tina will share the challenge next week at Noon Eastern Standard time in US/Canada. Curious about the weekly Lens-Artists Challenge, check that info out here!