Why I keep a Journal and Why I throw it Away....

   I've kept a journal for over 30 years but if you ask how many of them I have on my shelf I would have to say only one...the one I'm writing in at the present.

   I use to keep them in the beginning but one day about 25 years ago, I looked at all those journals gathering dust on my bookshelf and thought, "Why am I holding onto these?  I've lived the experiences, I've learned from them, now it's time to let them go."  So, I bagged them up and tossed them in the dumpster.

    Live it, Learn from it, and Let it Go!

   I suspect this revelation coincided with my immersion in Taoist philosophy.  I do know that it had a wonderful and liberating feeling to me.  I know many feel that their journals are such an important part of their lives they just couldn't imagine throwing them away.  My daily photo journal is another way I record my life.  Life lived one photograph at a time.  If I can have a book made of these daily posts I will...these are meant for the "public".  My written journal is too personal and private.

   I write every day in the morning.  It is every bit a part of my morning ritual as that first cup of coffee.  On the rare occasion that I can't write I feel half dressed.  Something is missing.  Writing, whether on paper or on-line, is part of my contemplative practice and I will continue to do it as long as I can hold a pen but I feel no need to save them.  I do re-read them after I fill up a journal.   Some of it makes me laugh and some of it makes me cry but I close the cover with the firm belief that it is past.  Those experiences were then and, well, now is now.

Your past experiences may

 have made you who you are 

today but their don't dictate

 who you will be tomorrow.

   Here is an interesting article on the health benefits of journal keeping that you might find interesting.  Whether you decide to keep those journals or not will be up to you...

The Health Benefits of

Keeping a Journal

The Religion of Ordinary Life...

And some, like me,

are just beginning

 to guess at the

 powerful religion

or ordinary life, 

a spirituality of

 freshly mopped

 floors and

stacked dishes 

and clothes blowing

on the line.

- Adair Lara

    Next month it will be 10 years since I received my grant to go to the Western Isles of Scotland and renew my passion for photography.  What an interesting journey it has been in those 10 years! For the past 3 years I have been recording that journey on this blog. This image of a clothes line on South Uist is so exemplary of that initial trip, when I was fully immersed in the monochrome image.

    What hasn't change in those 10 years is my equally passionate engagement with the commonplace.  The "religion of ordinary life" as Adair Lara calls it.  Now, I no longer need to travel great distances to practice my "religion"...it surrounds me everyday.  

   It isn't just my ordinary life that fascinates me but the ordinary lives of the birds and squirrels, the trees and pond, the flowers and grasses by the roadside.  It is the ordinary life of the natural world around me that draws my lens and my heart.

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers — for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are. ~Osho

   

Embracing the Bones...

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.

~Andrew Wyeth

  

   This may just be my Winter Etching for 2015.  It is a branch from my trumpet vine that somehow escaped being tied up this past fall.  I love the simple and elegant calligraphic quality of it.

   Andrew Wyeth understood the bleak beauty of winter and many of his paintings hinted at the Chinese aesthetic of large areas of "empty" space.  Of course, it is far from empty but it does give the eye a place to rest.

    The Chinese were also the masters of the single gestural stoke.  They said so much with so little.  This photograph may not be an etching exactly but it has that radical simplicity that I love so much in Chinese brush painting so I might just bend the rules a bit.

   Winter in Maine is the perfect time to embrace the bones of the landscape.  This stark simplicity will not be here come spring when a whole new aesthetic will be present.  Time to celebrate this season of whiteness...

Cultivating the Intuitive Mind...

The intuitive mind is a sacred

gift and the rational mind its

faithful servant.  We have 

created a society that honors 

the servant and has

forgotten the gift.

- Albert Einstein

   Intuition is the sixth sense.  For this contemplative photographer, it is in many ways the most important one.  For the rationalists among us, it is dismissed totally or rationalized away as merely an unsubstantiated "feeling".  Worse still, it often includes the word "woman" in the same breath.  

   There are many kinds of intuition of course but I want to focus on the kind of intuition a photographer might employ to direct their lens.  I go to the pond, it is my "destination" but after I arrive there I allow my intuition, my trans-rational self, to guide me.  Here are a few suggestions you might try:

1. Turn down the volume on your rational mind...

   Don't establish an agenda; don't give yourself goals.  Solidly formed expectations are a sure way to assure your intuitive mind will remain silent.  

2. Don't pick up your camera right away...

   Being in a hurry to record what is around you is playing into the rational mind's agenda of getting things done.  Intuition takes time to manifest itself.  The intuitive mind is not a "workaholic" like the rational mind.  It is comfortable with inactivity and simply "beingness" and you should be too.

3. Take time to quiet your mind...

   I close my eyes for a time.  Your eyes first path is to the rational part of your mind.  By closing them you allow the other senses a chance to enter into the conversation and the other senses are more closely aligned with the intuitive mind.  

4. Trust your gut...

   Once I open my eyes I trust whatever comes into my mind.  I try not to second guess the process which is the surest sign your rational mind is still in control. If you find yourself attracted to the pile of leaves at your feet...go with it!  And, most importantly...stay with it!

   Cultivating the intuitive mind takes time and patience and most of all trust.  It is there, in all of us - men and women - and it it just waiting for the opportunity to speak to you.  But intuition is an elusive thing.  The more you try to think about it, the less likely you will be to experience it. If the rational mind is the "know-it-all" at the party, the intuitive mind is the shy one in the corner.

Dig Deeper:

    10 Things Highly Intuitive

People Do Differently

Seeing the Unseen...

       

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion

to the clarity of their hearts.

- Rumi

   I am asked countless times, "How do you see what you see?"  After all, we all have the same eyes, we can stand on the same spot in the landscape and yet, we all see things differently.  I've thought a great deal about this idea, the idea of perspective, because it all comes down to that in the end.

   We are confronted everyday with an overwhelming and, at times, over loaded range of visual imagery.  When you go out with your camera you have literally millions of choices.  Why do some people "see", or choose to frame, certain parts and not others?  Rumi suggests it is a "heart thing".

   I also see it as a "why thing"...why are you making the photograph in the first place?  Is it merely to record a place and time...freezing it for you to savor later on?   Or are your responding to the whispers of the landscape?  Is seeing more a function of hearing?  That is the basis of all my visual listening exercises.

   Perspective is also dependent on circumstance.  What is happening "out there" effects what can go on "in here".  Mood shapes perspective in sometimes alarming ways.  

...what we see is what we are.

-Ernst Haas

   So I suppose we come back to the Rumi quotation I began with.  What I see, my ability to see the unseen, is totally dependent on who I am at that moment in time.  Tomorrow I will see something totally different and that is a wonderful thing.  That's why I can go back day after day to the pond, even stand in the exact same place, and see a whole different reality.  That is the essence of seeing for me, to bring new eyes and an open and receptive heart to the experience each time...

In Praise of Silence...

   If someone forced me to choose just one characteristic of winter in Maine that I love I would say its silence.  During a snowfall everything is hushed.  Even the occasional car that drives by seems muffled.  The world is snuggled under a soft white blanket and it is a lovely place to be.

   It is in the silence
that my hope is, and my aim.

Wendall Berry

    Silence is often thought of as the absence of noise but it is so much more than that.  It is an embracing envelop of calm and serenity that wraps around your heart. Unfortunately, true silence is something most of us never experience.

   I don't so much try to eliminated noise from my life as I try to lessen the effect it has on me.  I try to embrace a silence of spirit that makes the noise tolerable.  Walking in the woods after a snowfall is the closest I have come to experiencing the real fullness of silence and it too is a wonderful place to be.  In the joyous hubbub of the holiday season which is fast approaching, carve out for yourself moments of silence whenever you can.  You will re-join the festivities refreshed.  If you need a bit more convincing, check out these 10 reasons for making time for silence in your life...

10 Reasons to Include Silence, Rest and Solitude in your Life

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.

Channeling Your Inner Mystic...

The most unfortunate thing about the concept of mysticism is that the word itself has become mystified—and relegated to a “misty” and distant realm that implies it is only available to a very few. For me, the word simply means experiential knowledge of spiritual things, as opposed to book knowledge, secondhand knowledge...- Richard Rohr

   "The experiential knowledge of spiritual things..." That is how I view my interaction with the landscape.  What I hope to channel when I sit patiently on the edge of my pond listening visually to the whispers of the place.  It took me nearly a lifetime to acknowledge the spiritual element of place...the energy and "otherness" of the landscape.  Yes, it is water and trees and mist but it is also so much more.

   As Richard Rohr says, it is an experience, not something we can learn from books or even from me telling you it is so.  It is something you have to find out for yourself.  I have felt, these last five months at the pond, that I am can more easily channel that inner mystic because of my familiarity and comfort with the place.  In this case, familiarity does not breed contempt, it nurtures the mystic encounter.

   The channel opens up best when I can clear my head completely...when I am able to keep the petty and not so petty concerns of the day from intruding.  It is not easy and it doesn't happen all the time.  But when I can still the psychic rattling in my brain, even for a minute, something wonderful always comes through.

   November is an in between time, neither autumn or winter.  It is in these border times that I find the mystic encounter with the landscape most easily achieved.  It is a time when a walk along a pond or along a woodland path will often stop you in your tracks.  Try it...try channeling your inner mystic this week.

They (mystics) were simply people who trustfully affirmed, with open hearts, the

 grace of their own hungry experience—in that moment... Richard Rohr

Seen and Received

   I attended the Harvest Festival at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker village this past weekend.  What started out as a dreary cold morning ended in a glorious warm afternoon infused with that lovely light I love so much.

   This is a detail of a book in the gift shop which is a compilation of Shaker drawings. (You can learn about the Shakers here...)  I loved the title, "Seen and Received".  I have often written on this blog that I don't "take" or "make" photographs, I "receive" them.  I felt it very profoundly here in the village and it became the focus of my afternoon's camera work.

   The village was crowded with visitors enjoying the freshly made apple cider and all the activities of the day.  I did as well but I sat for awhile, a bit apart, to just breath in the beauty of the light on the facades of the pristine white buildings.  Receiving images requires quiet and stillness.  It doesn't come in a crowd.

   Because of the large numbers of people, my eyes naturally rose above their heads and I photographed the buildings from that viewpoint..looking up and out.

   The message to me was clear.  Above the happy hub bub of the day there was the serenity and quiet I always seek, wherever I am.  It is always there, even amongst the liveliest crowd.  Sitting quietly for a time allowed me to receive the images that I needed to receive.  It was the act of pausing that allowed me to forge that connection to this unique landscape.

   Seeing is one thing, receiving into your consciousness the meaning and message of the landscape is quite another.  The Shakers believed their drawings were gifts which they made visible through what they called their spirit drawings.  I think of my photographs as gifts as well.  What they did in their drawings I attempt to do through the lens of my camera.

   I will return to the village in early December for their Christmas Festival and to stock up on their wonderful herbal products the sale of which helps support continue restoration and preservation of the village. There are only three Shakers left, Sister Francis, Sister June and Brother Arnold.  They have put the 1800 acres of the village into a permanent land trust so this beautiful and tranquil landscape will endure for generations to come.  It is an endeavor I am happy to support in any way I can for I receive far more here than I give.

Walking in...

   There are times, I must admit, that I would love to have one of those huge telephoto lenses.  But just thinking about the size and weight of them quickly puts that idea out of my mind.  There is certainly a need for large lenses but, for me, I prefer to just walk myself in.

   On a beach stroll this summer, I tried one of my favorite exercises.  Set yourself a destination and photograph along the way.  Horizontals, verticals, step by step.  Walk yourself into an intimate embrace of just one small part of the whole.  Don't let yourself become distracted by what surrounds you.  Stay focused.

   Now, I honestly thought I was walking into an embrace of the amazing rocks, which reminded me a lot of the ones I'd seen on Staffa this Spring, but as I walked closer and closer it was the sand that drew my eye...the "sand script".  It is what I ended up with, my final image, when we could walk no further.

   That is the advantage of letting the landscape pull you in...letting it direct your lens.  It may have something entirely different to say to you...something you may not have heard if you had stood at a distance and accessed it "remotely" with your huge lens.  Walk in...walk in...walk in.

Attending to the littlest things...

   The pond was swarming with dragonflies the day I was there this summer.  I had just begun my Poetry of Place project and I wanted to focus on the dragonflies.  Which I did.  You can see the result on the right.

   One has to sit patiently and wait when one is intent on photographing dragonflies.  They come and go so quickly...luck certainly plays a big role in the outcome.

   I was pleased with this image...the detail in the wing, the way the little fellow clung to the twig just long enough for me to make his portrait.

   I even liked the somewhat monochrome coloration.  I decided to hang out a bit more to see what else might fly my way but I changed my location and the result was wonderful.

   This time I had the soft blue of the sky reflected in the pond as a background and some green leaves and pinkish dried buds.  The light was a bit bright as well and I played this all up when I got the image home and into Photoshop.  I wanted to enhance the magical quality I felt when I made the image.

   I think this experience has made me more cognizant of paying attention to what is around oneself and, also very important, what is behind the focus of my attention.  One cannot will a dragonfly to land just where one would wish but you can place yourself in the location that offers some interest and then hope for the best!

   These two photographs are a good contrast between the two ways you can approach the landscape.  The first is with the eyes of the  inquiring Naturalist and the second is with the eyes of the playful Artist.  I wrote a series of posts awhile back about the five different ways of approaching contemplative photography and you might wish to re-read it here.

   No one way is the "right" way.  What is right is what works for the intent of the image and only you know the answer to that. You might find yourself going from one way of looking at your world to another depending on the moment and your reaction to the experience. The important thing is to remain open to different ways of seeing.

Centering Yourself in Nature...

   I am find such joy in walking the shores of the little pond down the road from my house.  I pass it every day and I will often stop to just stand and look...most of the time, without my camera.  It is a way for me to center myself.

   When I taught pottery classes many years ago, I told the students that the most important part of throwing a pot was the centering.  If the clay wasn't centered on the wheel, the pot would be misshapen.  In fact, a lump of clay that is not properly centered can fly off the wheel...not a good thing as you can imagine! 

   Finding a place that centers your soul is important too.  One can then create the beautiful empty vessel in your heart that can be filled with your experience of the landscape.  For me now, it is the pond where I can best center myself.

   Fr.Richard Rohr, the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico, wrote a beautiful exercise for creating sacred space as you walk and I include it here.  I especially like the idea of creating a threshold at the beginning of your walk, no surprise after my recent pilgrimage, and the injunction to leave behind a token, which I always do when I visit especially meaningful places.  You can read a past post on tokens here.

 Wilderness Wandering

Go to a place in nature where you can walk freely and alone, ideally some place where human impact is minimal—a forest, canyon, prairie, bog, mountain. Tell someone where you will be and how long you expect to be there. Take adequate water and clothing for the conditions.

Begin your wandering by finding or creating a conscious threshold (perhaps an arched branch overhead or a narrow passage between rocks). Here offer a voiced prayer of your intention and desire for this time. Step across the threshold quite deliberately and, on this side of your sacred boundary, speak no words, but only expect!

Let the land, plants, and creatures lead your feet and eyes. Let yourself be drawn, rather than walking with a destination or purpose in mind. If you are called to a particular place or thing, stop and be still, letting yourself be known and know, through silent communion with the Other. Before you leave, offer some gesture or token of gratitude for the gift the wild has given you.

When it is time to return to the human world, find again your threshold and cross over. But now you have learned to expect God in all things.

My Daily Practice of Zuihitsu...

   Zuihitsu (随筆) is a genre of Japanese literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author's surroundings. It is roughly translated into "follow the brush".  I think it is a very apt description of my practice of gathering "breadcrumbs" in the landscape; something I very often do wherever I find myself.  In my case, zuihitsu is more like "follow the lens".

   Now that I think about the analogy, this entire blog is an example of zuihitsu!  My daily posts meander shamelessly from topic to topic and that is how I like it.  It is really how my mind works in most things so, why not this blog!

   I prefer to think of it as a kind of stream of consciousness thing.  One idea leads to another and you end up finding yourself in the most interesting and unlikely places.  Like the photographic breadcrumbs that lead me through a landscape.  

   This blog post was connected to a passage I read in a book, a breadcrumb I picked up at the pond, some signs I saw on Star Island, and a digital collage I made of them...talk about random!  But, like this photograph of the branch, there is a connection.

   All the topics I pursue are connected by the thread of my contemplative practice...my seeking metaphors in the landscape and the joy of finding commonplace enchantments wherever I am.  So, I must ask you...

  ...for that is where you will find your inspiration, Here & There and everywhere!  No need to travel to faraway places with strange sounding names, as the song goes.  Your contemplative landscape is as near as your back door in fact, you don't have to leave your house at all!

   Follow your internal GPS and make the ancient Japanese art of zuihitsu a part of your contemplative practice.  Who knows where it will lead you?

Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said: ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

― Lewis Carroll

   Now, how in the world did I get from zuihitsu to contemplative photography to Wonderland?  Curiouser and Curiouser....

 

 

Seeing is what happens between the photographs..

   Honestly, if I never picked up a camera again I would forever me thankful for the way photography has opened my eyes to the world around me.  In many ways, however, the camera can inhibit pure perception.  When you bring the viewfinder to your eye, you immediately "exclude" something.  I've made it a contemplative practice to spend time with those excluded areas of the landscape after I make a photograph.

Lines of Communication

   Seeing is what happens between the photographs.

    Seeing is both an eye and a heart thing for me...the camera an intermediary in the process and sometimes, often really, it doesn't "see" what I see.  Perhaps the light wasn't just right or, more likely, I chose the wrong aperture or some other technicality.   For whatever reasons, I rely on my field notes, sketches, and memory to translate the image visually into what I felt emotionally on location.

      Perhaps it was the lowering of the water level at the pond that exposed the lily pad stems and the approaching Autumn that colored them but I don't remember seeing them this shocking magenta before.  It really brought me to a stand still.  The contrast with the green pads was stunning.

   I had photographed the area and then put the camera aside and really looked at what was in front of me.  It was then I noticed the red stems.  The camera cannot see anything it isn't pointed at just like a brush cannot paint without the artist setting it in motion.  Camera and brush are static and impotent tools without the thoughtful spirit of the artist behind them.  Artistic vision is when we are able to string together a series of these "in-sights" and those happen first without the camera pressed to our eye.

Vision is the art of seeing what

 is invisible to others.

 - Jonathan Swift

  

Cultivating the Art of Seeing Simply...

   Being surrounded with visual possibilities, it is sometimes easy to become overwhelmed.  I feel that way sometimes at the pond where there is so much to distract me, so much to pull me in.

   When I become visually over loaded, I close my eyes and whisper, "See Simply...Simply See." I repeat this little mantra several times and it calms the visual receptors in my brain so that when I again open my eyes I can refocus them to perceive simplicity rather than chaos.

   This day I tried to cultivate the simple image.  An image that is soothing and sparse but still rich with texture and meaning.  This is one of my pond "Simplicities" - Wind on Water.  Although there was a subtle sense of movement, it also had a contrasting sense of calm with the great expanse of textured blue water.

   Haiku is the poetic equivalent of the image perceived simply.  This is the one I wrote as I sat on the edge of the pond after I made the photograph...

Wind on water flows

Across a silent blue pond

Rustling leaves respond

   Seeing simply isn't necessarily a minimalistic approach, although it can be.  For me, it is, simply put, the art of appreciating a small number of visual elements within the pictures frame.  Textured blue water and oval green lily pads is enough...it speaks of wind and movement...nothing else is needed...anymore dilutes the impression.

   Photographer and teacher, Kim Manley Ort, offers an online tutelage in the art of seeing simply called  Keeping it Simple.  A new session begins October 6th.  You might wish to explore this type of contemplative photography for yourself.  Kim offers this quotation for the art of seeing simply...

The simple things are also the most extraordinary

things, and only the wise see them.

- Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist

Cultivating the Contemplative Mind...

Click here to visit this wonderful website...

   When I lecture about contemplative photography, I always refer to this tree of contemplative practices produced by the Center for the Contemplative Mind in Society.  I think it demonstrates all the diverse ways you can nurture your own contemplative mindfulness.

(I hope to have some images and reflections to share with you from our weekend retreat later this week.) 

   This weekend, on our Star Island retreat, we utilized several of the "branches" from this tree as we sought to expand our mindful approach to photography.

   The way you cultivate your contemplative mind will be unique to you and, as this weekend so clearly demonstrated, you needn't "go it alone".  You might seek out an anam cara, a soul friend, to journey with you. 

   The important thing is to first recognize the need to make some form of contemplation a focus in your daily life.  Some people are naturally drawn to this lifestyle while others are not.  No need to question the need if you discover you have the seeds of contemplation sprouting within yourself.  Just water and tend the little seedlings and before you know it you will have fully mature contemplative mind.

   I might suggest Thomas Merton's wonderful book,  Seeds of Contemplation, as another source of inspiration.  Living a contemplative lifestyle is an enriching and illuminating approach to the world around you and you needn't join a monastic community to do it.  Later this month I will be retreating to the wonderful St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts for a weekend respite. It is a way for me to re-charge my contemplative batteries.  You might like to seek out a similar place in your area.  It might be a good place to start your contemplative journey.


  

Non-Dualism and the Photographic Process...

  We all begin as dualistic thinkers.  We have to learn to discriminate between things.  It helps us develop a firm footing.  Unfortunately, some people remain in this mode of thinking their entire lives.  Its always "us vs. them", "good vs. evil", "right vs. left".  Theirs is an either/or, totally black and white world.

   When I taught art at the elementary level I would end a lesson on warm and cool colors with my Kindergarten folks with a little game.  Five years old are very dualistic thinkers and they love to sort things.  I gave them a big pile of colored circles and two boxes. One was labeled "cool colors" and one was labeled "warm".  

    At first it was all fun and games...red goes here and blue goes there...no discussion.  But then along comes violet.  One child said, "It's a warm color, see the red?"  Another said, "No, see the blue? It's a cool color." A third child turned to me and said, "I think we need another box, Mrs. Turner!"  Ah, the beginning of non-dualistic thought.

   Good photographs, bad photographs...the right light, the wrong light...the best camera or paper.  All this represents a dualistic frame of mind.  Watch the video below and open your mind to a non-dualistic approach to the photographic process.  (Thanks, Kim Manley Ort for the link!)  It is 45 minutes but well worth the watching...

Chris Orwig on the Photographic Process

Clarifying our Vision...

An insight from my Walden Wood walk.

..the camera becomes more than a means to record our vision; it becomes a means to help clarify it. 

 - David duChenin

   Every time we put the camera to our eye we are attempting to record our vision but, as David duChenin states above, the images that we make help us to clarify that vision as well.  We may think we are making an image for one reason but the landscape may have an entirely different message for us.

   We record and edit.  In the old film days, we thought long and hard before we made an image.  We didn't want to waste film. Now there is no need to worry about that but people still feel the need to "trash" images to save space on their memory card.  I use to do that and now I never do.  I bring an external hard drive and download the entire days images...every last one.  As a friend once advised me..."Save them all...the good, the bad and the ugly."  The photograph above, and many like it, is the reason why I stopped deleting images from my card.

   It wasn't until long after my walk around Walden Pond that I came across this image in the file for that days photographing.  It stunned me really as I looked at it on the computer screen although it had hardly registered when I made it.  

    It seemed as if half the image was in black and white and half was in color but I assure you, this is what my camera recorded.  I made this photograph when I was just beginning to photograph in color...just stepping away from an exclusively monochrome approach to my vision as a photographer.  This image seemed to acknowledge that transition in a very graphic way.  I was able to reflect on it and see that there will always be these two sides to me and that's just fine.  I don't have to be one or the other...I can be both.

   Read the rest of duChenin's wonderful essay on vision here.  Make a promise to yourself, right now, that you will save all your photographs from now on.  They all have the potential for meaningful reflection.

The Charm of the Ephemeral...

   Photographers are always chasing the ephemeral...the fleeting...the transitory.  Light may be the greatest example of this.  After all, we're all about the light.

   One moment the light can be luminous and breath taking and the next moment flat and grey.  I saw that very powerfully when I was in the Outer Hebrides.  Light there could change dramatically in a matter of moments.

   Of course, one needn't look any further than their own backyards to experience the ephemeral moment.  I got up very early one morning just as the sunlight was illuminating the left over hydrangea blossoms.  Amazing really that after the heavy snows this winter these delicate, paper-like flowers were still there...still able to catch the glow of early morning light.  A moment later the glow became a glare and the effect was lost.

   Some may credit pure luck, to be at a location just as the light does something magical but I prefer to believe as the great Irish poet W.B. Yeats admonished...

The world is full of magic things patiently

waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

   In our obsessive search for the fleeting, the transitory, the momentary we may be missing out on the magic of our own backyards.  Become aware of these brief times of luminosity whenever and wherever they occur.

Up Close or Far Away?

   My first exhibit was called Up Close and Far Away and comprised my black and white images of the Outer Hebrides made in 2005.  I've always loved that phrase and one Spring morning, on my way to the mailbox, it inspired this image and post.

   Some photographers go for the "long view"...the expansive panorama...the breath taking landscape a la Ansel Adams.  Others  focus on the close up...the intimate, near to hand view point.  And then there are some who want an infinite depth of field so they can take in both...they want it both ways!

    I would say I am firmly in the Up Close Camp...the tiny, precious blue bells in the foreground as opposed to the dazzling mass of forsythia in the background.  I must say, however, I like them seen together and by having only one in focus, I can demonstrate my preference.

   Each season has it's own color contrasts.  Spring can offer either subtle soft contrasts or vividly stark ones.  I love both.  Seen like this, I can contemplate the contrast and not just the individual colors.

   The next time you are out in an immense and breath taking landscape, take the time to see what is right at your feet...turn your lens down here and not just out there.  Forget worrying about the depth of field...make a choice...up close or far away?