refining your vision

This afternoon I’ve been editing images to a batch limit of 20 of my best to prepare for printing a portfolio that will be reviewed at an upcoming photography workshop.  This is a difficult task, editing your own work.  But it’s something very valuable.  As I was looking through past images to see if anything caught my attention, I found a color version of this image with a little more reflected sky on the top edge.  And Bruce Barnbaum’s words came back to me… review your images over and over again if something tells you that you have something there.  You might not see it today… you might not see it tomorrow.  In this case, I didn’t see it until 2 years later.  But I finally saw what I intended to share.  Not because my digital darkroom skills are much better than 2 years ago, but because my vision, my way of seeing is becoming clearer to me.

So enjoy this abstract arrangement of rocks from the shores of Jenny Lake, WY… even if it took me 2 years to share it with you.

sunset over the city

I’ve been in a state of emotional limbo this past week loosing some motivation to go out and shoot.  I know this happens on occasion to every artist, but I just cannot seem to find that spark in my usual subject matter.  So I’ve started playing with the camera… not trying to really capture anything in particular, but rather trying to capture how my spirit is feeling in my images.  This image is close to reflecting that state of conflict and retrospection that I am feeling right now.  Who knows, this might be a new body of work?

Fleeting moments

In honor of the beautiful magnolias that were frosted two nights ago, I decided to post this first image of Magnolia ‘Candy Cane’, one of my favorites at the Scott Arboretum.

Spring has been incredibly fast this year and even with the fleeting nature of these moments I’m amazed at how many people don’t notice the details of the magic that is unfolding before them.  And unless I have my camera set up in front of an obvious subject, they walk right past me often gazing in bewilderment at what I could possibly be photographing.  I just don’t understand the lack of interest and knowledge in the natural environment that’s happening all across the western world.  But after watching Jamie Oliver on ABC Friday night trying to reform a school lunch program here in the US, I shouldn’t be so surprised.  During part of the episode, he was quizzing young children on the names of vegetables; NONE of the children recognized ANY of the vegetables and they didn’t even know that french fries were made from potatoes!  From my own experience, most clerks in grocery stores don’t even know how to ring up produce by name. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had to tell them what something is and how to prepare it!.  And I’m almost always helping people identify ornamental plants wherever I am.  So if people don’t care about how we sustain ourselves as part of life on this planet in regards to food, how can people possibly be interested in the bigger picture?

Back to more photos… they calm my spirit and keep me hopeful that somehow we will reconnect.  We have to.

Trillium erectum our native wake-robin

yellow crocus in a field of Scilla siberica

Aralia spinosa emerging from a snowy winter

red maple flowers

We have tried utopia and can no longer afford it…

To quote directly from Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods, “Professor David Orr describes what he believes is a paradigm shift in “design intelligence”… He calls for a “higher order of heroism,” one that encompasses charity, wildness, and the rights of children.  As he defines it, a sane civilization would have more parks and fewer shopping malls; more small farms and fewer agribusinesses; more prosperous small towns and smaller cities; more solar collectors and fewer strip mines; more bicycle trails and fewer freeways; more trains and fewer cars; more celebration and less hurry.  Utopia?  No. says Orr.  We have tried utopia and can no longer afford it.”

While this paragraph is obviously biased towards western civilization, it simply states many of the values I hold dear.  At this time of year when we start to get inundated with holiday propaganda, simple statements like this, the fact that a friend discovered a new species of single-celled microorganisms last week, and making time to photograph the world around us bring me back to the true value and wonder of the the inter-connectedness of life.

Enjoy this close-up of a wild grass taken just after sunset at a “vacant lot” near Mostardi’s Nursery with my Nikon 105mm VR Micro f/2.8G IF-ED lens just as the sun dropped behind a ridge of trees.

Autumn

Rich Seiling wrote a great blog on Photographing the Sierra in Autumn yesterday.  I echo his sentiment that often the fleeting nature of Autumn is what captivates me this time of year as a photographer.  One day, just a few hours or even just a few seconds can make an entirely different moment any time of year, but Autumn seems to be exceedingly fleeting and what might be a beautiful scene of fall color one day might be a bare landscape the next.  Or the subtle color of this Nandina domestica ‘Harbor Dwarf’ (commonly known as heavenly bamboo but is not even related to bamboo) might be blazing red in just two days time.

There is so much to take in visually and I also find my sense of hearing and smell heightened at this time of year.  Just this weekend the sound and scent of Eastern white pine needles toasting in the afternoon sun took me back to sleeping on a bed of these needles in a pine forest when I was about 10 years old.  Cercidiphyllum japonicum (or Katsura tree) foliage released its cotton candy perfume and immediately I had a visual image of the very first time I met this species at the Seattle Art Museum in Volunteer Park.   The warm mid-day breeze mixed with a cool draft off a local river on Long Island had a different scent yesterday than a few weeks ago.  Autumn is an amazing transition; moments in time to become closer with knowing ourselves.