Hi ,

I just got back form a 10-day trip to Catalunya Spain, where I spent a handful of blissful, mostly sunny days walking for endless hours around Barcelona and some of the surrounding towns with my camera. 

Only I hardly used my camera. I only shot 30 frames with my X-T5 during the entire trip. That's right. Thirty. Three zero. In ten days. Normally, I'd shoot hundreds, or even thousands of frame on a trip like this, like I did the first time I went to Spain back in 2003. So what was different about this time?

The reason I shot so few photos because I was busy drawing and painting every day. In fact, I filled nearly an entire travel journal with over 30 watercolor sketches. 

I've been intrigued by romance and seeming sense of liberation of travel sketching ever since I read The Back of Beyond: Travels ot the Wild Places of the Earth, by David Yeadon, where each chapter is accompanied by a single pencil sketch that illustrates that particular story. At the time, I had just started my photography, but I still dabbled with sketching and drawing over the years. 

Then, during our recent New Zealand trip, I decided to try my wife's watercolors, and somehow I became hooked. I'd brought a sketchbook with me, and even though my drawing skills aren't all that great, something clicked when I combined the two mediums, and suddenly I was off on a brand new creative adventure. 

So, when it came time to get ready for Spain, I brought my tiny watercolor kit, three small travel-sized brushes, a pair of stacking 100ml water containers and moved up to a larger, 8.5" x 5.5" sketchbook, all of which fit easily into my camera bag. I figured I'd alternate between the two, but as soon as I hit the streets of Barcelona, all I wanted to do was sketch and paint. 

So how does this all relate with photography? As I think about this new skill, it strikes me that there are two significant parallels. First of all, color is integral to both crafts, and having spent my entire adult life obsessed with light color, film and film simulations, and things like vibrancy, saturation and color relationships, the whole watercolor thing seems to fall right into place in my creative mind. The only difference is that I'm making my own light on the paper, where as with the camera, I'm capturing what already exists. 

Plus I enjoy the high level of geekery of choosing specific color paints for my palette and seeing how each one mixes differently with other hues.

And then there's the whole aspect of composition and abbreviation. I obviously have an eye for framing and deciding what to include and not include in my photographs, and this translates quite well to other mediums. 

Whether it's with the camera or the paint brush, I'm always looking for the most effective compositional balance for my scenes, and I'm often driven by the challenge to show as little as possible in the image and still communicate the overall feel of the scene. I find myself taking the same approach to watercolors and "loose" sketching. In fact, sometimes the more "wonky" and imperfect your art is, the better it translates, because it allows the viewer's brain to apply even more interpretation as it "fills in the blanks" and deciphers the overall message of the piece.

Watch my "Power of Abbreviation" video to hear more about this concept. 

There are two other things I'd like to touch on. First of all, I find the intrinsic feel, and style of watercolors quite refreshing, because most of my creativity is based around the computer. All my photos are on the computer, and I record in mix music on the computer as well. Scribbling ink or splashing water and pigment onto a piece of paper is real, and there is no "undo" command or processing tools. You get what you get, if you mess up, there's not much you can do about it, except embrace the process and accept how it fits into the overall piece.

Of course, that's not to take anything away from digital photography; after all, my complete professional and creative world has been wrapped around it for over two decades. It's highly unlikely that I would ever go back to shooting film again, so the computer will still always be an important tool in my creative life; I've just added a non-computer option, and it's turning out to be a whole lot of fun.

My second point. Sure, I'm a pro photographer, but there's no reason I can't branch out and go down other creative roads as well. That goes for all of us. Creativity is a vastly important part of our existence as human beings, and so we should embrace it in whatever mediums or forms appeal to us at any given time during our journey through life. That makes us better, happier and more fulfilled people. I'm sure that many of you are already doing that. 

I'm already pretty entrenched in this new journey, and I look forward to delving even further and eventually taking some pictures again. Unfortunately, my little Cessna is down with a shoulder injury right now, (just like I was two years ago), so it's going to be a while before I get back into the air and out onto the gravel bars. 

Ok. that's all for now. I hope you enjoyed this email. As always, thanks so much for reading, take good care of yourself these days and find/tag me on Bluesky @dantaileyphoto.com!