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

hot papaya

With tomorrow’s solstice and the official beginning of summer, I thought I would post this image of a relatively new coneflower introduced by my friends at Plants Nouveau, Echinacea ‘Hot Papaya’.  I found it blooming last night in the entrance garden of the Scott Arboretum.  And although I took the typical portrait shot with as much detail as my 105mm macro lens could capture at f/45, I quickly found the sultry petals luring me in for a closer look.  So I recomposed and found f/7.1 to capture enough detail that you can still infer it’s a flower, yet with a shallow enough depth of field to soften the flow… an image more reflective of the plant’s name!

my best images of 2010

A lot of photographers are posting their top 10 images of the year 2010 this week, so I thought I would jump on the bandwagon too.   Besides, it’s another chance to practice editing skills!  Of course I still have some 2010 images to process; and I’m sure others do too, but here are the top 10 I have ready to date.  Enjoy!

being a photographer

I am thinking tonight about how lucky we all are to have our sight.  Photographers use more than just their physical sight to “see” a photograph.  But tonight I am thinking about this because my father is having eye surgery Tuesday to correct a blown retina after cataract surgery.  A visual artist who may or may not get his full sight back.

It takes a lot of emotional courage to be an artist. Remembering this, I picked up a favorite book again tonight, Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland, and found this quote to share… “In the ideal – that is to say, real – artist, fears not only continue to exist, they exist side by side with the desires that complement them, perhaps drive them, certainly feed them.  Naive passion, which promotes work done in ignorance of obstacles, becomes – with courage – informed passion, which promotes work done in full acceptance of those obstacles.”

The photo above is of aspen trees on the shore of Grant Lake in the Eastern Sierras. Clicking the thumbnail will bring up a larger image for closer viewing.

sunflower smiles

At this time of year, after we’ve had weeks and weeks without much rain, the garden starts to look a little tired.  I also find myself enjoying the fruits of the harvest and becoming obsessed with food.  So last night I went in the search of some new farmland not too far from my home to potentially photograph.  And then I found them… a field of sunshine and smiles lit up across the horizon, sunflowers.  Such a happy flower.  And these were nestled in a field of other grasses and thistle. Dressed for the hot weather, I was not wearing long pants.  So tonight I will return properly attired to thoroughly explore this area and a nearby serpentine outcrop a good friend told me about today.

moon set

Last week I was busy in Champaign-Urbana, Ilinois attending an AERGC (Association of Education and Research Greenhouse Curators) meeting.  But when I arrived at the small 4 gate airport on Sunday the sky was blazing for a beautiful sunset.  I was in the heartland and the summer storms were at their peak.  It was all I could do to get checked into the hotel room and grab the camera from my bag to shoot out the 5th floor hotel room!  The next morning something woke me up quite early and I saw this amazing moon in the still cloudy sky.  I knew there would be another great opportunity in about 30 minutes for a moon set as the sunrise came into play.

The next 3 days were full of great lectures and meeting fellow greenhouse managers.  But after dinner the second night I was able to witness another wonderful display of light.  I cannot decide which of these images is my favorite, so please comment!  Darn that I packed light because my focus was the conference and didn’t bring the wide-angle… lesson learned!