Shadow Lands...

Summer Shadows

   Some subjects seem tailor made for contemplative photographers.  Shadow studies are definitely one.  Light and shadow have psychological as well as spiritual connotations.  Perhaps that is why we are so attracted to them.

  All shadows whisper

of the light.

- Emanuel Carevale

   We think we can know something about an object by looking at it's shadow but we can't.  Objects are solid things and shadows change with the light...elongating or softening.  They are quite fascinating to study.

   "Never photograph at mid-day!"  How often we have heard that warning as photographers.  So we meekly confine our camera work to early morning and late afternoon.  Perhaps this will be the year I will explore the light of mid-day...fearlessly confront the harsh and unforgiving shadows of life.

Winter Shadows

   The practice of photography is full of such arbitrary rules but rules are made to be broken.  If your goal is to create exquisitely lighted images than by all means stick to the early/late day agenda. 

    But if your goal is to explore all facets of contemplation, the harsh as well as the soft, then venture forth at the height of the noon day sun!

   Maybe we need to amend the old saying, 'Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun.'  Let's add contemplative photographers to that list of iconoclasts!

   Much can be learned in adversity...as much about the artist as the art.  The painter Paul Klee loved to say that to look only upon the beautiful is like a mathematician that only uses positive numbers!  Light and shadow are the positive and the negative...but which is which?