I'm off in a new direction and very excited about it! This image is one among many that came from a six-hour photo shoot I did of the kids on Thursday at the K-5 school where I volunteer in the art classes. For only the second time in my life, I played with slow shutter speeds. My hope was to find a way of expressing the amazing energy these youngsters bring to everything they do. I'll be putting up the gallery as soon as I've edited and selected the most successful of the lot.

My creative juices have really been churning since I found David Alan Harvey's blog "Road Trips" a couple of weeks ago. I think I'd mentioned that I'll be taking a six-day workshop, "The Photographic Essay," with David as part of "LOOK3: Festival of the Photograph" in Charlottesville, Virginia in early June. Not only is David Alan Harvey (DAH) a consummate photojournalist himself, but the online community he's formed through his workshops and blog is made up of hundreds of superb photographers from around the world. What I'm enjoying are their in-depth discussions about photographic ideas, issues, concepts and explorations. His blog is very interactive, often having 200 or more comments between David and his readers on just one thread. Interesting stuff! As I read the comments and looked at people's work, I realized it was time for me to stretch my wings and find more original ways of saying what I want to say photographically. That's what Thursday's slow shutter speed explorations came out of. I intend to make many such explorations from now on.