Advent...

   It is Advent at the pond.  The glorious fall foliage is long past and the serene white snows are just beginning.  It is that time of year when we wait to hear the soft padded footsteps of Father Winter approaching.

  Our snow storm two days ago is a prelude to what is to come.  Father Winter has sent an advance guard to let us know what we can expect when winter finally settles it.  It could be gone next week because during this advent season things come and go.

    On the day I made this photograph, the leaves and last seasons lily pads were suspended in the ice...their season of waiting has begun as well.  It is the time to practice patience which, as a contemplative photographer, I find a necessary skill to hone.

Noun

1.

advent - arrival that has been awaited (especially of something momentous); coming

    Although the word, with a capital "A" is most often associated with the coming of Christmas, I find the changing of the seasons here in New England have their periods of advent as well.  As I said in yesterday's post, it is a threshold time, a time of becoming.

   I think there really should be 8 rather than 4 seasons, to allow room for these advent times.  Winter here in Maine is a momentous time but right now we are just waiting for it to fully arrive.

   

The Poetry of Place - 19 November 2014

On the Threshold of Becoming 

   The first evidence of ice at the pond  on the day I visited. (It has since melted away.)  It was forming along the shaded and sheltered southern bank.  In most of the area it was this crackled, bubble filled mass...in others it was so clear you could see the leaves and lily pads in frozen suspension.

   The part that most intrigued this contemplative soul was the border line...the threshold between the frozen and the liquid.  The place of becoming.  The little fingers of ice seemed to be reaching into the water and beckoning it in.  Ice is an amazing thing to watch form and I am sure that as the pond slowly but surely succumbs to the icy grip of winter it will offer me so many new possibilities.

   The trees' reflections in the pond, something I have enjoyed so much,  will be erased my the encroaching ice.  I was still able to create an abstract version of this frozen encounter which I call Ice Cubed.  (You will see the effect better if you click on the image to enlarge it.)

   There really is no end to the possibilities of interpreting this place. Every time I visit I always try to spend some moments just breathing in the magic although with temperatures hovering in the mid-20's F it is becoming increasingly difficult to linger for long periods. I wonder what will happen when the snow blankets the shore...how I will make my way to the pond?

   I have complete faith though. I will be able to experience the pond in new and exiting ways as the winter approaches and I will see what I need to see each time I visit. That is, for me, the heart of the contemplating process...to just open up my heart and allowing the landscape to show me whatever it wishes.  Relinquishing my need to control the outcome allows be to see new things.

   For all of you readers who celebrate Thanksgiving Day, have a wonderful time with friends and family.  I know what I am most thankful for, besides those friends and family, it is the opportunity to share my thoughts and images with all of you!  I feel very blessed this year especially with my new found relationship with my little pond.  The following is a quotation from Henry David Thoreau, who's writing on Walden Pond inspired me to find my own Walden here at Little Clemons Pond.  I couldn't agree more with his sentiments...

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. ...O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

A Language Other Than Words...

   Years ago, when I was teaching painting, I tried to explain abstract art to my students who had a difficult time with the non-representational form of the paintings.

   I told them that you can't look at these paintings using your regular vocabulary...that they were using a language other than words.

   Now that I am fully immersed in the abstract images I'm discovering at the pond, I can more fully embrace this concept of "a language other than words"  by which I mean they were not descriptions of "things" but translations of emotion and ideas.

   It is a language of color and movement, light and shadow, simplicity and chaos.  It is a visual experience rather than one of clear observation.

   I think that may be why abstract paintings are often very large in scale...to more fully immerse the viewer in the experience.  I'm not sure how well these photographic abstractions I'm making of the pond will translate into really large pieces.  I guess I will have to try one and see but  I do enjoy to the pure joy of working in this new visual language and like learning any new language, it will take time and practice to perfect it.

Deepening the Mystery...

   Yesterday's post got me thinking about the real role of the artist/photographer.  Yes, in many ways, we are documenting the world around us through the images we make but is there a deeper role for our photographs?

The job of the artist is

to deepen the mystery.

- Francis Bacon

   There is a superficial reality that our eyes see and then there is the metaphysical reality that our heart perceives.  Contemplative photography is a blending of the two.

   "Deepen the mystery"...I love that phrase.  For the world is a mystifying place, full of layers of meaning and relationship.  Our jobs, as contemplative photographers, is to ferret out those deeper levels of meaning any way we are able.  Those that most touch our sousl are the ones that will resonate with us most and the images we make from that place of resonance will have a profound effect on us and perhaps others.

Photographer: Susan Burnstine

Susan Burnstine portrays her dream-like visions entirely in-camera, rather than with post-processing manipulations. To achieve this, she created twenty-one hand-made film cameras and lenses that are frequently unpredictable and technically challenging. The cameras are primarily made out of plastic, vintage camera parts and random household objects and the single element lenses are molded out of plastic and rubber. Learning to overcome their extensive limitations has her to rely on instinct and intuition... the same tools that are key when trusting in the unseen.

   When I read this biography of photographer, Susan Burnstine I was fascinated!  Creating your own camera that will photograph the way you feel about a subject rather than relying on post-capture manipulation is an amazing concept.

   Her work has an ethereal, almost other-worldly feeling.  Done exclusively in black and white, they have the appearance of beautiful lithographs from another century or carefully rendered charcoal drawings.

   Now, I am not suggesting that your rush out and build your own camera...the mere thought of that boggles my mind...but it is the idea that our perception of a place or object does not have to be "tack sharp".  We are, after all, artists as well as photographers.  Our medium is light but it's expression is totally up to us.   You can view Susan's work here. 







 

Choices...

We are our choices.

- J.P. Sartre

   I have been making, for me, a lot of astounding choices recently.  The pond has not only inspired me to go abstract but I am seriously beginning to think of some of my photographs in more painterly ways in the  processing of them.

   Now, I'm not sure what that says about me.  I've never been interested in the abstract photograph before but the experience at the pond is pushing me into places I never thought I'd go.

   I'm not going to spend too much time dwelling on it however.  I have just embraced it and I'll see where it leads me.  What choices have you been making lately with your camera work?  If you lined up the last dozen photographs that you have made, can you see the choices you've made clearly?  Is there a pattern to those choices?

   I suspect that we go in cycles...like my fascination last winter for photographing only what I could see out of my windows.  Whatever drives the photographic choices we make, remember, it is all about choices and the choices we make determines the photographs we make.  And the photographs we make say a lot about who we are.

White on White

   With the first snowfall comes not only beauty but photographic possibilities.  Photographing snow is not easy, well, at least I don't find it so.  If it is too bright it burns out, too dark and it turns blue but it's worth the effort.

   It made me think of the possibility of photographing only white things, not just snow.  There are so many variations of what we lump into the category of "white".  Infinite forms of whiteness. 

   A photographer spent some time photographing the Harvard campus and focused only on "the lighter side", creating a series of neutral toned images.  You can see the series here. Although not completely white, the series does show the possibility of the limited palette in photography.

   I often do what I call "Etchings" during the winter, when I photograph the delicate shadows on the snow.   And of course, there is the fantasy world of frost on windows.

   These two images were originally photographed in color and then converted to black and white.  The challenge now, however, would be to photograph white things in color.  You would have to be a lot more selective and discriminating in your subject selection and more careful in the way you handle the image in Photoshop.

   Finding ways to challenge your camera work by photographing white subjects is simply an exercise in honing your eye...becoming more attuned to subtle nuances of tone and light.  And you don't have to live in snowy New England!  Consider spending a day just looking for white on white composition possibilities.  Might be an interesting way to spend a day.  Hmm...looks like my ink is fading into whiteness.....