war in the veggie garden

I’ve been remiss in posting on my blog, so when I overslept this morning, missing my morning trip to the gym, I thought I would take the opportunity to share with you why by taking some photos.  I’ve been waging war in the vegetable garden.  Last week, I found my first two tomato fruitworms burrowing into my beautiful ‘Juliet’ Roma-grape tomatoes.  So I ‘took care of them’ and applied BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) on the eggs of the young; I’m growing everything organically.  Ok, I lost a few to a common pest and helped mother nature take care of controlling the remaining pest population.

Then I came home to a ruin of tasty slicing tomatoes still dangling from the vine.  Something was taking various sized chunks out of them.  I had installed a deer fence around the garden  in the spring, so I knew some smaller critter was enjoying my growing harvest.  Initially, I thought it might be squirrels or chipmunks since the neighbors had problems with squirrels last year, devastating their entire harvest in one weekend; I’m growing indeterminate heirlooms (Giant Belgium Pink and  Costoluto Fiorentino) so I will have a continual crop all summer and hopefully avoid a complete loss.  Last weekend I spent an entire afternoon constructing a netted cover for the garden.  But I missed one small corner since I had just barely enough netting to finish the job… and that’s why I found out who the thief was, a bird.  He found the small hole and took one last bite before I secured that hole with additional netting and some zip-ties.

So far so good for this week.  I’ve been able to harvest the home grown tomatoes and make some delicious tomato sauce or ‘gravy’ as commonly called here.  I’ve never tasted such sweet sauce from home grown tomatoes.  Definitely worth waging war in the veggie garden.

gently upon a soul

This past weekend, I visited Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.  Many photographers have worked this ruin/museum and produced amazing images, inspiring me to visit a local place I have not seen in the 14 years I’ve lived here.  I’ve also started experimenting more with dramatic light and knew this site would be challenging and offer a good exercise.  I never expected to come away so excited about the images I captured on that day… so excited to photograph stills without anything living in them, so excited that I’m planning to return and to look for additional sites, my awareness now keen to develop a new project.

I have not been able to put into words yet what it is about making these images that captures me so.  But it’s not about gloom and doom as much as it’s about the light, about illumination, opportunity, spirituality, the connection to the good in the world… an odd paradox for a prison.  I suppose I’ll have to think about this.  But the ray of light in this image reminds me of God rays coming through a cloudy sky laying their gentle beams of light upon the earth… here the single beam laying its hand gently upon a soul.

For more images from this day, visit the New Work gallery on my website: Rhoda Maurer Photography at Photoshelter.com

spring 2011

Every day is different… and this past week spring has decided to keep things moving at a furious pace.

I walk a mile every morning and night for my commute to work; and every walk I notice something else popping out of the ground or coming to life from a branch.  I prefer a slower spring, one where I can savor the transition and slow down enough from our culture’s work/life expectations enough to notice the magic that is happening in a continual flow before us.

On my walk last night, this native Pachysandra procumbens captured my attention enough to stop the furious pace of my day; and before I knew it I had spent 30 minutes wondering at its tiny blossoms.  I try not to think about anything during this time… Oh sure I think about technical aspects of taking the image with the given conditions, but then I set myself free.  I just allow experiences to be noticed and they in turn help form my approach to photographing what I see.

I’ve been struggling to make time for a meditation practice beyond yoga.  And I think I’ve finally realized… I’m struggling because I already have a meditation practice I enjoy.  I just need to spend more time practicing and allow that practice to flow in the direction it’s meant to.

something different

Recently I’ve been looking at the local landscape a little differently…  looking for a new project or focus to spark some new energy and creativity.  It’s so easy for me to find macro images, very intimate landscapes, in the suburbs of Philadelphia.  But it’s harder to find something different: different than a broad garden shot describing the planting scheme or layout of the land, different than a plant combination emphasizing texture or color contrasts, different than the soft play of light I so easily seem to find. Today I found very harsh light and remembered the possibilities of using harsh light in the stark landscapes of Death Valley.  I was fortunate to have learned some of these ways of seeing from some of the best black and white photographers of the west last fall.  And today those teachings came back to me as I was looking at this tree against the strong architecture of a campus building.  Maybe not a project, but definitely a lesson worth remembering and practicing for future possibilities.

gratitude

Today I found myself grateful… grateful for the flowing water from the tap of my bathroom sink; grateful for this gift from nature that landed on the leaf of an evergreen tree in the mountains, nourished the land and travelled through a myriad of her waterways and human plumbing systems to allow me to splash some tepid water on my face as a greeting to the day.  I found myself grateful for sunshine… solar radiation to warm my body while working in the below average temperatures today. And grateful that even though the weather has been chilly, spring is continuing to push forward with new delights for our senses most every day.  The Puschkinia scilloides, or striped squill, popped open today; they bloom shortly after Scilla siberica and Scilla mischtschenkoana in southeastern Pennsylvania.  And while I enjoy all the spring bulbs and the way they cheerfully greet spring and attract the early season pollinators, I especially enjoy the striped squill.  It’s a little less abundant, a little more delicate, and requires a little more attention to notice it’s unique morphology from Chionodoxa sp. and Scilla sp.  Tomorrow will bring another day to be grateful and surely more sings of spring…

gentle inspiration

As you might already know from following my blog, I’ve been patiently waiting on new eyeglasses for several weeks now. And I’ve been using this excuse for not getting out and shooting some macro work; I almost always focus manually since the auto-focus jumps around so much.  But I was gently inspired by a friend of mine who is taking beautiful images with a dislocated shoulder… So I needed to figure out a way to keep shooting too.  Last Friday the weather was unbelievable… nearly 70F here in Pennsylvania and luckily I had scheduled a half day off from my day job.  So I got out my camera and shot all my macro work hand held and with auto-focus.  Surprisingly, I came home with eight or more keepers in two hours of shooting.  I found the expected witch hazel and winter aconites.  But I also found some other marvelous signs of spring including this Turkish filbert, Corylus corluna, sending forth these catkins.

time for slow

I was reminded again today to slow down… not by a person, but by nature herself.  An “ice event” they call these storms, causing headaches for commuters who have to drive or walk to work.  I’m one of those walkers most every day with a mile long walk to work and then back home again; a slower mode of transportation that allows me valuable creative time.  I often think of photographic opportunities, or new subject matter during these walks. One of those musings reminded me to visit a site along the Crum Creek I photographed last year in February.  So I ventured out last Sunday into the first sun we’ve had in what seems like a month.  Lots of kids and their families were enjoying some sledding on the hill of the Holly Collection slope.  But I kept my distance taking the less traveled route along the shore of the creek, sharing some footsteps with cross-country skiers from earlier in the day.  Snow covered canes of invasive-exotic weeds that line the creek in the sunnier locations gave me less than sure footing as I plunged hip deep into the snow… the joyous cry of happily airborne sledders in the distance.  But this solitude and slow snowy walk allowed me time to watch, to watch the light, to watch the patterns, and to sense the beauty of the day.  Time didn’t matter and for a moment I was drawn back to the sand dunes of Death Valley.  Yes, sand dunes of one of the hottest places in North America on a snowy January day.  The mounds of snow along the creek and the play of light over them from the forest of beech, maple and hemlock reminded me of lessons learned from watching the light in the desert.

inspirations

Today I am appreciating friends of mine made during the Death Valley Workshop with Bruce Barnbaum, Jack Dykinga and Jay Dusard last October.  We are collaborating on a print share among our small group of friends and I am seeing some of their work from the workshop for the first time this week.  I am inspired by their images.  We all traveled the same roads, visited the same sights, and yet all came back with very different images.  Artist bring themselves to their image making, and these photographers are artists.  As David DuChemin recently commented on Twitter, “Vision comes from shooting from the heart, from making images more about how you feel than what you see.”

Mark Waits http://www.markwaitsphotography.com/

Chuck Kimmerle http://www.chuckkimmerle.com/

Alexenander Ehhalt http://www.alexander-ehhalt.com/content/index_ger.html

Eric Black http://www.ericpeterblackimages.com/EPB_Images/Welcome.html

Photo above: one of the ancient bristlecone pines in the Schulman Grove at sunset