Rachel Telles Photography

I attended a workshop at White Sands this past November. One of the concepts that kept coming up during the workshop was to see something twelve different ways. One of the other workshop attendees showed some of his images of an orchid that came from a project where he photographed this orchid many different ways, I don’t recall how many images total he made, but it was an incredible amount. The workshop itself changed my perception of White Sands. Being an Alamogordo resident for 24 years meant I have been looking at White Sands for most of my life. For me, White Sands invoked anxiety and chaos. I wasn’t seduced by the sands on the first day of the workshop. I couldn’t imagine how I would see the landscape with fresh eyes. I didn’t think I could make any original images. I came into the first day feeling discouraged, but I did find inspiration on that first day. Maybe it was because I listened to the advice given me in the workshop, or perhaps it was merely the universe telling me that there was plenty that I haven’t seen. The images I made during the workshop were made with fresh eyes. I feel that my work improved a few notches because of the workshop and because of my change in perception. Since the workshop I have been contemplating this dramatic shift in my work and I became inspired to come up with a new project. This blog will follow my progress. This project is sort of a hybrid of the concept of seeing 12 ways and the popular Project 365. Project 365 is the idea where someone takes an image a day for 365 days and blogs about it. I began thinking what if I combined the two ideas and made 365 different photographs of the same subject. Is it possible? The subject that I will focus on for this project will be White Sands. It will definitely be a challenge, but I am up for the challenge.