"I'd Like to Hand it to You!"

   I love photographing hands...hands at work, hands at rest.  Hands reveal so much.  This is a hand project that has been rumbling around in my head for awhile.

   If you could hand someone a special gift, something that you feel is essential for their happiness and well being, what would it be?  Well, here is my gift to you for 2015...

 I give you the gift of

 a seeking heart.

   This is, as some of you may recognize, my scallop shell container which holds my pilgrim tokens.  I bought it a few years ago in France and it goes everywhere with me now.  It symbolizes that "seeking heart" to me.  Pilgrims of any stripe are seekers and the journey needn't be to faraway places.  Seekers are those who are always looking, always open to the new and the serendipitous.  Seekers may grow old in body but never in spirit...they are life long learners on every level that matters.

   Now, what would you give to others if you could?  How would you symbolically represent it?  If any of you wish to share your gift with those on this blog, please send me a photograph of your hand holding the "gift".  Send it to Upcloseandfaraway@hotmail.com.  I would love to see what your gift would be! 

What's Your Line?

   One of the things I love to do from time to time is to focus on just one visual element and spend a day, even a week, exploring the many ways I might encounter it in the landscape.

   Line is a good one to start with.  The starkness of a Maine winter seems to favor this particular visual element.  By processing the images in black and white, the simplicity of the composition is greatly enhanced.

  

   Your line exploration can be literal, as in these wire fences and tomato cages or they can be the implied lines etched on the snow by their shadows.

   These explorations are really a way to fine tune your perceptual skills.  By focusing on only one element at a time, it allows your to push yourself to see the many ways it can be interpreted.

   Line can occur in the space between two objects...in the negative space.  Or it can be a dotted line when small objects, like fallen petals or stones, suggest a linear movement.  Line is a fascinating element to explore...from the cracks in the sidewalk to the bare branches of a tree silhouetted against a grey winter sky.  Look for lines in reflections as well as in objects...you will have no shortage of subject matter.

   The very first week I began to work on my photography again after a 25 year hiatus, was back in February of 2005.  One of the first images I made was the photograph on the right. It still remains one of my favorite images after all these years.  It has all the simple calligraphic beauty an photograph of this sort can have for me.

  Why not chose one of the visual elements to explore over the next week?  You can read about all the possibilities in this series I did awhile back.

A Contemplative

 Look at

the Visual Elements

   

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.....


   

What are You Thinking About?

   I've always liked the idea of having a "project" to direct my camera work.  Right now, I have three.  Not that I work on each one everyday, of course.  But they are seldom far from my mind.  In between I gather "breadcrumbs" when and where I find them and some of those go into my daily photo journal, Memories4Me.  I search for interesting photography and photography related articles to post on my Google+ and Pinterest sites.  So I would say, photography in some way, shape or form is always on my mind.  What about you?  What occupies your mind right now?  Here is a link to 21 different photographic projects that may inspire you...

21 Photographic Projects

In Praise of Reflections...

   I've become fascinated by the painterly quality of water reflections lately.  This one I made in Ireland but I've focused on reflections in my pond studies of Little Clemons Pond as well.

   The light on the water does wonderful things with shapes and color. I can really see these as paintings as much as photographs.

   It is the poetic nature of reflections that draws me.  Reality subtly altered and transformed.  I find them exquisitely beautiful.  They can have a strong abstract element to them as well, especially if you remove the source of the reflection from the composition and focus only on the reflection.

   This is an image from my "pond ponderings".  I seem drawn each time I go to the pond to see what reflections I can find...how the weather alters the color and tones of the reflections.

   This might make a nice summer/fall series (imagine the fall foliage spilling reds and oranges in the water!) and if you want to learn a bit more about photographing water reflections, you can visit this link for inspiration:

Photographing Water Reflections

  

My Own Personal Walden Pond...

The Poetry of Place: 

Reflections from the Edge of the Pond 

 I had decided to take a sabbatical from the blog for the month of July. I needed rest and
recuperation...a break from the daily posting.  I had no intention of putting my camera away however.

   What I needed was a focus close to home.  I found it less than a mile from my house...my own personal Walden Pond.  I'd photographed it before, of course, but in a more random way.  On the 29th of June I began a systematic photographic study of the pond.  I plan to visit a few times each week over the course of next year at different times of day and in different weather.

   Little Clemons Pond is a bit smaller than Walden, only 25 acres to Walden's 61 acres, but it has no buildings along its shores...very unusual in this part of Southern Maine.  This is because one family owns all the surrounding land.  I received permission to walk its shoreline for this series.  Of course, they don't "own" the pond, no one can own a body of water in Maine, and I hope to take to a canoe to explore the pond from another viewpoint.

   I am no naturalist to be sure but I hope to take a cue from Thoreau and keep a journal of my observations. This is a project that I can envelop myself in on so many levels.  I look forward to sharing some of the images I receive with you as I progress through the year.  On this first day, it was the reflections that captivated me.

   I had been so consumed with my Threshold Pilgrimage for so long that the let down when I returned was more like a crash and burn experience.  Now, I felt I had a new, less stressful, focus for my camera work and writing.

   I've visited the pond 5 or 6 times since my first visit on the 29th and have amassed dozens of images and pages of journal entries.  I am also re-reading Walden and I feel closer to Thoreau, on an emotional level, now than I ever have, even after nearly 40 years of visiting Walden.  I can understand his fascination for a place.

   A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.  - Henry David Thoreau

   Have you ever considered finding your own Walden?  Maybe it won't be a pond but for me the concept of 'Walden' represents a place of retreat and contemplation for the seeking soul and it needn't be faraway or hard to get to.  Find one if you can and then make a commitment to visit on a regular basis over the course of a year.  See what it has to teach you...

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?

  

Celebrating the Seasons - Beltane

   Today, according to the old Celtic calendar, is the first day of summer.  Time to begin planting but not here in Maine.  We are still likely to have a night time frost!  As long as there is snow on Mount Washington we are susceptible and there is still plenty of snow on The Mount.

   The celebration of Beltane is very ancient.  It is a fertility festival and one of the ancient "fire festivals". Bomb fires characterize this day.  It was a time to recognize the fertility of the earth and hope for a bountiful harvest.

  When I was growing up, children use to make little May baskets and fill them with fresh flowers to hang on neighbors door handles as a surprise. (I always used violas and pansies.) One of those old seasonal customs that has gone by the board I'm sorry to say.

   Another visage of long ago was dancing the Maypole. It has its roots in the ancient Beltane festival.  I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone now who knows the dance pattern that would result in a beautifully braided Maypole.  Crowning the Queen of the May was an event that also accompanied the festival. You can see a re-enactment of the dance here.

   Now, you maybe asking, what does all this have to do with being a contemplative photographer?  Good question!  Using the seasons and their celebrations, we can unwind the year through our images and consider the need of acknowledging and remembering each way the earth progresses through the wheel of the year.  Moving now into the light, charged with energy and new growth and then slowly turning and sinking into the darkness and death that invariably follows.  It is a lovely metaphor for our own life as well.  Creating a wheel of the year series in photographs would be an interesting project I think.  What marks each month?  Where are you on this symbolic progression?  (I put myself at late September!) What ways do you acknowledge and celebrate the turning of the wheel where you live?

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Footnote:

   I was always puzzled by the fact that June 21st was considered "mid-summer"...remember your Shakespearean play, A Midsummer's Night Eve?  The Summer Solstice begins our summer season but it also marks the point when the hours of daylight start shortening.  It makes more sense when you know that if May first is the first day of summer, then June 21st is midway through the season.  August 1st  is the Celtic first day of Autumn.  When we moved from an agrarian culture to an industrial one we changed the way we looked at the seasons.

   I just had to include a photo of my first daffodil!  Imagine, it slept beneath all that snow this winter, just awaiting its time to re-emerge.  A very reassuring thought to my mind.  In the depth of winters bleakness there is always hidden life waiting.  The ultimate metaphor for hope.
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Contemplative Possibilities - Patterns of Light

   After this long, grey winter it isn't surprising that my thoughts turn towards sunlight.  The lengthening days are such a relief! Today is the vernal equinox; we've reached the half way point.  For the next three months our days will be filled with more and more divine light.

   My Grandmother use to tell me that as a small baby she would put me on a blanket in the sun on the kitchen floor.  As the sun moved, I would roll to stay in the sunlight.  Now I delight to see Emerson seeking out the sunbeams each day to sleep in. He becomes almost "catatonic" in them. (Pun intended!)  All creatures are attracted to light it seems.

Light is the symbol of truth.

 - James Russell Lowell

   I started photographing these moments of light around my house.  I love the patterns they create as they pass through objects.  This is, indeed, a wonderful contemplative possibility for you to try sometime. You don't even have to leave the house for this one!

   Emerson drew me to these three images.  The one above I noticed in the kitchen when I put down is morning slurp of milk. (He gets a tablespoon everyday as a treat!)

  These two were on the screened porch.  Emerson goes out there every morning for his "airing".

   I could have ignored these simple light patterns as I went about my daily rituals of caring for Emerson but these are the beautiful little occurrences that one should pause and consider.  The more you wrap yourself in a contemplative mindset, the more these small moments of "enlightenment" will reveal themselves to you. (My, I'm really on a punicious roll this morning!)

   You can see other moments of light on my Pinterest board...

Let the Light Touch You

  

A Squirrel's Tale...

   This has been the winter of photographing the near to hand and only what comes to me.  I have been gathering images of my furry friend Gaylord for several weeks.  But I have discovered that there is more to this photographic series than first meets the eye and therein lies the tale.

   Photographing Gaylord has been an excellent exercise in patience and discernment mainly due to the severe limitations placed on it.

   I can only observe Gaylord when he decides to grace the feeding table or hanging feeders and I can only photograph him from two vantage points, a door and a window.  Even that is limited to only 2 or 3 panes in each.  I can't think of any series I've done in the past that has been so constrained.

   What this exercise has done is to challenge me, day by day, to find another way of portraying Gaylord, to explore his "squirrelyness" from every possible angle that I am able to observe him from.  This has required that I not only wait patiently but stretch the compositional possibilities anyway I could including experimenting with different Photoshop techniques.

    This has been a fascinating project for me.  It reminds me of a Freeman Patterson  exercise.  He would ask his students to use only one white plastic lawn chair to create a series of photographic studies.  This squirrel study was even further constrained by the limited possibilities of accessing the "subject".  I would recommend that you try this type of photographic series.  Find one subject and explore as many ways as possible for photographing it.  Push the envelop and try some creative processing as well.

    Yes, I've learned a lot this winter simply by staying home.   Although I have to admit I'm itching to get out in the landscape once again, Gaylord has been a very welcome companion on this "staycation" of mine and for that sweet, small soul I am very grateful.  You can see my album of his images below...

A Squirrel's Tale

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A Necessary Disclaimer:

Deep in Meditation on a Sunny Morning

 Half way through this series I realized that more than one squirrel had a notched ear and it was clear that more than one "Gaylord" was represented in this grouping of images!

   It didn't bother me really as the purpose of the series was to try out different processing possibilities and squirrely compositions.  At one point, there were four grey squirrels on the feeding table and they all had subtle variations...I quickly dubbed them  all Gaylord! 

   When I saw the folio of images side by side I could easily pick out the different characters, they were really so different.  Perhaps they were taking turns having their portraits done.  Why should my original Gaylord have all the fun.  Now I don't give a moment's thought to which is which...they are all wonderful! The photograph above was one of my last and, really, it is one of my favorites.  This Gaylord sat for several minutes like this...basking in the sun of a rare warm morning.  Honestly, I will never look at squirrels in the same way after this winter's experience with these gentle souls.


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Celebrating the Seasons - Imbolc

   Today is the Festival of Imbolc in the Celtic calendar and, although hard for us in the frozen north to imagine, the first day of Spring!  It is also the feast day of St. Brigid who is second only to St. Patrick in veneration in Ireland.  The site of her monastery in Kildare is one of the stops on my Threshold Pilgrimage in May.  I thought I would celebrate the Celtic seasons this year by doing a series of posts as each season unfolds.  We begin with Imbolc...

    The Celtic seasons are based on agriculture and tied firmly to the land and animals.  Imbolc is the celebration of the freshening of the ewes who are giving birth at this time. I didn't have to travel too far to photograph the image for this post.  Moonset Farm, a few miles from my home, is owned by Jackie and Mike Gardner.  Jackie was one of the subjects in my book First Person Rural and I love visiting to see what's happening on the farm at any season.

   Imbolc is a time of renewed and focused energy after the resting time of winter.  Although calendar Spring is still weeks away, there is a "stirring in the belly" that is quite palpable.  Soon, here in Maine, the sap will be rising along with the ewes milk and people will be ordering seeds for this year's garden.  Already, despite the cold temperatures, there is a warming of the suns rays.  There is a slight swelling on the tips of the forsythia bush and with it, anticipation for what is to come.  It is a season of infinite hope.

Copyright by Marcy Hall

   I make woven St. Brigid crosses at this time of the year (you can see one in her hand in the illustration on the left).  It is a tradition for children to weave them on February 1st in Ireland and if you would like to try your hand at one, here is a video tutorial. 

 This delightful image by Marcy Hall is the latest in the "Dancing Monks" series over at Abbey of the Arts.  It, along with others in the series, will soon be available for purchase as prints.

   In the meantime, follow this link to read Christine Valters Paintner's post on St. Brigid and Imbolc.  Then, consider ways you can experience the birthing of Spring where you live.

    For more links on Celtic traditions visit my Pinterest board, On A Celtic Path.   After all, St. Patrick's Day isn't far away!  Ceiliuradh a na seasuir! (Celebrate the seasons!)

The World Isn't Black and White...

...and neither is the pursuit of the photographic image!  And by that I am not referring to the monochrome image vs. the colored one.

   When I am with a group of photographers, other than contemplative photographers that is, the conversation inevitably turns technical.  It's all f-stops and focal lengths and Canon vs. Nikon.  The opinions are always very concrete and definitive.  There is a "right" way and a "wrong" way to do just about everything...from the "capture" of the image ( :-( ) to the processing of the image in Photoshop ( the latest version of course.)

   Well, I hate to burst their bubble but it isn't as simple as the right equipment and the right digital work flow.  Without a thoughtful and considered approach to the "why's" then the "how's" make little difference.

   Now I know I've stood on this soap box before and let me re-iterate, I think learning the "hows" extremely important in the beginning but if it is all that occupies your thinking then you are missing so much.

   I will end with a link that may make you consider the monochrome image the next time you are out and about with your camera.  The world may not be black and white but sometimes it looks better that way!

15 Reasons the World Looks Better in Black and White

  

Autumn Reflections...

   This little pond is very near my home in Maine.  It is very special because, unlike most ponds and lakes in Southern Maine, it has no development along it's shores.

   All the land bordering this pond is owned by one family who stock it with trout each year.  People come to put in their canoes and kayaks for a quiet paddle undisturbed by motor boats and jet skis.  How long it will remain this sanctuary of silence and peace is anyone's guess.  I hope it can remain so somehow for people need places like this near to home.
  

   While I was sitting on the shore recently, enjoying the last of the Autumn color, I found myself reflecting on reflections.  What stirs our hearts when we see a particularly beautiful one?  Why do we respond so strongly to these sorts of images?

   Perhaps, one of the reasons is that they are not always there.  The light and the wind conditions must be just right or there will be no reflection.  It reminded me of my many trips to the shore of Loch Bee on South Uist in the Western Isles of Scotland.  I was going to try and see the flock of mute swans that live on the loch but on my third trip it was the reflection that stopped me in my tracks. You can read about my experience at Loch Bee in the post, A Contemplative Photographers "Thought Flow".  

   Another reason might be the stillness of the experience...the lovely silence.  Nothing disturbs the surface and that must appeal to some deep need within us.

    Finally, there is the element of soft abstraction in some reflections.  While there is a mirror like property to some reflections, the most beautiful reflections, in my estimation, are the ones that take on an impressionistic distortion.

   This blurring of reality is very thought provoking.  Each of my photographs of the pond's reflections, from top to bottom, become increasingly blurred.  I've presented them in the order I made the images.  I find it is often very enlightening to look at the specific order in which you record a location.  What came first and the progression to the final image reveals a lot about your thought process.

   The next time you venture out to photograph, pay attention to not only what initially draws your eye but where your eye finally comes to rest.

   I am not alone in my Autumn reflections.  You can find out how others view this magical season of change, impermanence and transformation....

Autumn: Reflections on the Season

  

Shifting Perceptions...

   I'm teaching for the month of July and I made this study of the clouds while I waited for the custodian to open the door of the school.  It reminded me of the time, years ago, that I took my class of first graders out behind the school to lay in the grass and look at the shifting clouds.  We were studying the painter Constable I think.

   Now, it made me think of the subtly shifting perceptions we have as contemplative photographers.  Our mood, and therefore, our visual perceptions, changes from day to day even moment to moment.  When you are in a particular "dark place" you will see, perhaps unconsciously, images that speak to that dark place.  This is actually a good thing.  Contemplative photography should speak to all of you; not just the sunny, happy you.

   It was a particularly good day for photographing clouds since the sun was greatly filtered so I poked my head out from time to time to see what was happening in the sky.  This really has the makings of a photographic series I think.  The sky can mirror our emotions with alarming accuracy and it would fill out journals with interesting observations.

   So much of contemplative photography comes from a sub-conscious level.  We are often completely unaware of it until we sit with our images and really look at them.

   To get back to  my little students looking at clouds...I remember asking them, "what made the clouds move?"  Of course they said the wind but then I asked them what made the wind move?  Then their unfetter imaginations kicked in and I got answers like "angels beating their wings" to "it's just magic!"  Ah, to be a six year old on a summer day!

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.  -W.B. Yeats

The Composite View...

   When you look at a landscape you cannot take it all in at once.  You look right, you look left, you look up and down but you only see what you focus on, one view at a time.  The rest is only an impression, a sensation of the whole.  Somehow, you have to pull all these impressions together in your mind to create the composite view of the landscape.  It is an interesting idea...this idea of the composite view.

Photo collage by David Hockney

   The artist David Hockney is a photographer who has embraced the composite view.  His photo collages of multiple views of a single site are a very interesting approach to this dilemma.

   I think I might try this, not as a collage but as a photographic series. As each view draws my attention I would make an image.  It might be valuable to record the sequence of the views as well.  What drew my attention first?  Then what...then what?  This would create a highly illuminating map of my thought process I think. 

    What we choose to focus our attention on, and what we don't, is crucial to the contemplative photographer.  Our attention defines our contemplation.  Are you a "big picture" sort of person...making sweeping appraisals of the landscape or are you more of a "small picture" person...reveling in the details?  Each person's attention will create their "reality" of the place and all are merely composite views at best.



  

Look but don't Touch...

   I discovered this tree behind the retreat house in Bethany Springs, Kentucky while I was there.  It seemed to be a normal enough tree but wrapped in these lethal looking spikes!  No doubt it was a natural protection of some sort.  I pity the poor squirrel that tries to climb this tree!

    Don't you know some people like this tree?  They wrap themselves up in all sorts of defenses that say to all those they encounter..."Look but don't touch!"  These people shrink from human connection.  It is a position of fear and insecurity I think.

   I've often toyed with the idea of creating a photographic series based on human personality characteristics.  This photograph would definitely fit the bill!  I think I knew an English teacher in high school that could be this tree!  I used to think her a perfectly horrible person...so "prickly" and remote.  There's a woman now that I know that is also a perfect match for this tree.   I think they both must have been incredibly lonely.  I wish I had been kinder towards them.  All this from a photograph of a tree.  This is why I love contemplative photography so much!  It has the ability to draw amazing things out of the attic of your mind...

  

Inspired by Mark Hirsch...

Photograph by Mark Hirsch from his series..."That Tree"

   Speaking of creating a photographic series, (which I did yesterday,) consider the amazing series "That Tree" by Mark Hirsch.   Next time you find yourself wondering what you should photograph, his series should definitely inspire you.  He photographed a single tree, a large oak, 365 times...one photograph each day for one year!  Each was a totally different interpretation of this amazing tree. I was fascinated by the interview with him and I think you will be too.  The slide show of his images of the tree are truly remarkable for the diversity of his approach.  The other fact I found remarkable is he made all these images with the camera on his  iphone!  So much for the hardware elitists! 


   One of the vows Trappist monks take is the vow of stability, Brother Paul told me when I visited him at Gethsemani.  I think it is an idea worth pursuing for the contemplative photographer as well.  Staying true to one geographical place, to re-visit it over and over and learn from it, is a worthy pursuit.  By narrowing down you subject to just one possibility, it forces you to look for new and unique ways to express it.  The iphone, Mark said, even contributed to this.

It yielded images I might not have captured with my DSLR cameras because instead of reaching for a different lens I had to change my position, my perspective or my visual expectations. 

  This is a great exercise for for enhancing the creative dimension of our medium.  Mark is a photojournalist, use to the quick, decisive image.  I love how his experience with "That Tree" has altered his way of looking at the world...this is the true and lasting reward of contemplative photography.

With landscape photography and inanimate objects like my tree, I had to learn to slow down and take on a more contemplative approach to photography. I learned to become more sensitive to the subtle changes in light, the details and the textures.  -Mark Hirsch

Read the interview with Mark here.  Mark plans a book on his series.  It will be wonderful I'm sure to see how one man and one tree entered into a conversation for a year.  He says he still stops and photographs the tree from time to time.  Such a powerful relationship does continue, like friendships.  They only improve with time.

   

Consider Taking a Contemplative Stroll this Summer...

Click here to see the folio of images from the stroll...this photo by Paul Buckley.

   In April, I led a contemplative stroll at the Thoreau Farm.  It was a glorious day and the participants each recorded their unique impressions of the landscape.  For all of them, it was their first such endeavor.  I think they will agree with me that to think "contemplatively" as you photograph opens  up a whole new world for you.  A world where perception is separated from judgement...where seeing becomes beholding and you enter into a true relationship with the landscape.

   I posted the guided meditations we used that day and you can use them for any walk you might take this summer.  Here are some further suggestions.

•  At the beginning of your stroll, sit and think about your intentions.  Try to clear your mind of expectations.  Pledge to do the stroll without prejudice or judgement. Accept whatever you find.  Be open to what attracts your attention and stay with it for awhile.  Try not to put a time limit on the stroll...let it go slowly and meditatively, as a walking meditation.
• As you move along your path, take time to sit and experience the landscape through all your senses...what does your ears hear?  What do you smell? What draws your hand to touch?
• Consider each thing that compels you to photograph it a "breadcrumb".  Let it lead you on.
• If possible, turn around and retrace your steps back.  Do this to discover all the things you missed on the way out since you will be seeing them from a new perspective.
• At the end of your stroll, take a few moments to jot down your impressions in your journal.  Did any of your images you received surprise you?  Did you find a "theme" to your series of photographs? Did your time in the environment change your thoughts in any way?

   You could take the same stroll again and not see the same things.  Each time you are, in a very real way, walking in a whole new landscape.  The light won't be the same, or the weather, and you are not the same either.  Brother Paul Quinon at the Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky has been walking and photographing the "same" landscape for over 50 years!  He told me that each walk is an entirely new experience for him.  Henry David Thoreau walked the fields and woods around Walden pond his entire life and never tired of it.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new

 landscapes but in having new eyes.

- Marcel Proust

   So, find your place to take a contemplative stroll this summer.  Perhaps promise yourself to revisit it in each season.  Hmmm....this sounds like the beginning of a new photographic series to me!

Follow Your Fascinations...

   Photographic projects are how I organize my camera work.  Not that I don't take an isolated, spontaneous image from time to time.  Pure serendipity is a wonderful thing!  But this post is about creating photographic projects that honor your inspirations and allow you to follow what fascinates you...wherever it leads and however long it takes.

   I've had many projects over the years, my latest is "Remnants".   Some were inspired by other artists, painters as well as photographers, some simply speak to things I've found fascinating in a visual sense or in a contemplative sense.

   Winter is upon us here in Maine and time for me to pick up the thread of a project I began back in 2005 - "Winter Etchings".  I posted my winter etching for 2013 recently but there is more for me to talk about on this subject.  It is not a large project, despite the length of time I've worked on it but I offer it as an example because it has a few inspiration sources you might find interesting. 

   My initial inspiration was actually Chinese ink paintings and calligraphy which I fell in love with on a trip to China in 2002, before I began seriously photographing again.  I loved their elegant simplicity and graphic quality; the purity of black lines on white paper.  The second inspiration came from the watercolor paintings of Andrew Wyeth specifically his asymmetrical compositions and large areas of "empty" space.  Finally, the gorgeous monochrome images of photographer Paul Caponigro, especially the images in his book "New England Days", which made me appreciate snow in a whole new way.   All these inspirations fermented and blended together in my imagination over time to produce "Winter Etchings".

   Photographing snow takes special consideration.  Too much sun and the highlights just burn out...too little and you don't get an "etching"!  Perhaps that's why I just have a few images in the collection so far.  But each time I find one, like the one above which was made at a farm in New Hampshire,  I'm delighted.  I will probably never come to the end of this series.  I doubt the fascination for these delicate line studies will leave me.

    I encourage you to explore your fascinations and create a photographic project of your own.  Don't worry about how long you should work on it or how many images you have in the folio.  Embrace your fascination with your whole heart...it won't let you down.

"What you love is a sign from

your higher self of what

your are to do."

-Sanaya Roman

  

Winter Etching - 2013...

The Spiral Dance - 2013

   Each year I try to add to my Winter Etchings series. Living here in Maine I have plenty of opportunity to observe shadows on snow and it is one of my favorite winter activities.   In fact, when I first began my journey as a contemplative photographer eight years ago this February, a "winter etching" was in the very first group of images I made. They are so beautifully suited to the monochrome image I love.

   This is my winter etching for 2013.  When I posted on New Years Day I included a spiral I found in the library at Glastonbury Abbey.  I thought it suited the text of that post beautifully and loved the idea that I'd discovered it quite by accident.  When I returned to Maine a few days later, I discovered this spiral in a place I had driven by hundreds of times and never noticed.  I guess I wasn't ready to see it.  That's how it is with contemplative photography.  When you open your mind to an idea or an image you begin to see them everywhere and in that repetition there is revelation.

 The spiral has always  been a favorite image for me.  I even wear one in a ring I had made for me in Ireland.  But now, with my focus on "pathways", I see an even deeper meaning for of this elegant curving line.  I have spent the last months journeying inward, to the very core of my being but at some point we reach the center and then it is time to journey out, to re-connect with the material world and especially Nature.  With the slowly lengthening days I begin my journey out from the secure center of solitude welcoming whatever or whomever crosses my path.  It is all part of the spiral dance...

A sprig which spirals
from a grain,
rising up,
to taste the flame.
And the circle grows
each time around,
for all within
are spiral bound.
Casting prayers
on fate or chance,
all within,
the spiral dance.

(Read the whole poem by
 Emileo Miller-Lopez
here.)

   My experience in the Glastonbury Abbey labyrinth and this spiral revelation, inspired me to create a Pinterest board on labyrinths. Visit it through the link below.  Perhaps the "spiral dance" is in your future...

LABYRINTHS - It is Solved By Walking