Aug17
“Miracles…rest not so much upon…a healing power coming suddenly near from afar, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that, for a moment, our eyes can see….what is there around us always.” –Willa Cather
We spend so much time caught up in our turbulent—disturbulent mindsets that we miss so much around us. How restorative to our mind/body/spirit to simply take a moment to bring our attention to whatever beauty is unfolding around us….to know we always have a choice about what we pay attention to, to break our habitual mindsets. Awareness is available to us always. It’s a muscle we can exercise just like any other.
Jun21
This is in the ‘as good as it gets’ category in the life of a freelance photographer. The very personal image on the right is, simply, my back porch shot on a rainy morning. Rain and mist offer wonderful visual opportunities for capturing evocative images. This one found it’s way to a much bigger audience, ending up as the cover to bestselling author Nicholas Sparks’ latest novel, shown on the right.
Jun14
I apologize for the lapse in my posting. I’ll spare you the reasons; hopefully some of them will become evident as I pick up this thread again. And thank you to all who have been so encouraging for me to continue (you know who you are!). Most recently I’ve been collaborating on a series of botanical images for a new website. Our challenge has been to bring a fresh set of eyes to these oft photographed elements. What is the essence of the thing? How do we reveal it? It’s a practice.
Dorothea Lange put it best: “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
May02
I just came across a reference to Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifest for Growth —chock full of great advice for anyone interested in creative process, or for that matter, anyone with a pulse. #8: DRIFT. ‘Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgement. Postpone criticism.’ This image opens a series of collected nest ‘portraits’; all found around my property while indeed wandering aimlessly. The unfortunate feathered friend presented around the same time…most unexpected but not unwelcome.
Apr23
The big question this past year (or two) of reinvention has been ‘To what end?”. After a nice run as a commercial photographer with continued hankerings to produce art, I’ve found myself continually straddling the two realms, somewhat ill-defined; often paralyzed. Always have been, most likely always will be. I’m tired of asking myself the questions “Will this make money?”, “Is this art?” , or “Does this matter?”. I’ve decided to let go of the thinking part and just do. I feel lucky enough to know what gets me juiced, and hopefully will help get others on the same path (the ‘matters’ piece) That’s enough for me.
The fact is I’m always taking pictures. It’s what I do. Many never see the light of day because they don’t fit the box of my commercial career….so they accumulate in files and folders. Just for fun, in honor of Spring and to hell with the box, I’m putting a bunch of existing work here under this heading of projects. The following group is from a series shot on gloomy days while meditatively strolling around the property just after it rained.
Apr18
I’ve been paying a lot of attention to language lately—to the weight our words can carry. I’m enamored by words with nuances and multiple meanings; words that speak to much bigger ideas. True is such a simple little word, yet, as a directive for living our lives, it packs quite a punch. Truth seems to be a niggling problem for so many these days; lots of people getting into hot water over the absence of it in their lives. Among its meanings: ‘in accordance with fact or reality, accurate or exact, real, or rightly named’, and, in relation to construction, ‘in alignment, balanced, in correct position’. I expected the word ‘straight’ to apply; it doesn’t necessarily seem to, nor did the word ‘right’ ever come up—interesting. True also can mean loyal or faithful, as in a true friend. Another definition I recently came across is “something lived in the moment; an expression of the individual’s connection to the whole.” A person’s life can be true—undistorted, balanced. This will look different for each one of us. Seems we’re all working pretty hard at reconstructing—‘trueing’ ourselves these days. For me, ‘trueing’ myself takes the form of spending time in nature, in the studio with my camera, on a yoga mat, on a cushion, reading and writing. At the end of the day, all are attempts to be true, to get at the truth, to get real. How about you?
Mar15
So the days are an hour longer, yet we ‘lost’ an hour Sunday. I’ll take the extra hour of daylight. Time is a funny thing–all hours are not equal. We’re always rushing around, saying we don’t have enough time, wasting a lot of time. For me it’s not about having more time, it’s about the quality of my time. Time can be full or empty. I just read somewhere that we spend 95% of our time thinking and 5% of our time being aware and fully present. Scary! All that thinking time is generally frustrating, having the human brains that we do which tend to ‘loop’ to the negative, fearful, habitual. This does not make us happy. Since learning about the concept of ‘flow’ as described by Mihalyi Csiksentmihalyi, who has written extensively on the subject since he first defined the term in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience—that feeling of being in the ‘zone’—totally immersed in an activity where time disappears, I continually try to adjust that percentage.
I can get there with some effort through yoga and meditation. I’m there when I’m photographing, always. I’m often there when I’m cooking, gardening, writing—creating something. I’m also there when swimming or hiking, and of course being with friends and loved ones. It’s about a balance between challenge and ease. The more hours we spend in ‘flow’ , the happier we will be. Time spent pursuing all forms of ‘pleasure’ does not necessarily make us happy. Time spent thinking about how to be happier does not make us happy. Time spent engaged, in flow, in love, in bliss, in the moment feels full, and enough.
Feb28
So I’m sitting here in my morning room—the room I have my coffee, read, write, ponder as the sun rises before me each day. The view is filled with the foreground silhouette of a beautiful oak tree; always in silhouette until the sun is well above the horizon—sometimes bluey-pinky-orange, sometimes chalky-white, depending on the weather. I am thinking I am so sick of winter. I need it to be over. It’s raining–I find myself continually looking to see if the snow is melting, and it strikes me, how ridiculous this is. There may be another month of this! It’s like watching paint dry, or watching a pot boil, or obsessively checking my blackberry—same thing. It’s all a form of resistance to what is—wanting things to be other than what they are, which in my experience is the root of all suffering.
This is what I love about being in nature—it forces us to allow for what is, accept the cyclical nature of things, and find beauty in all of it.
Feb25
Undoubtedly it’s getting tough to find much beauty in winter any longer. The ‘bloom is off the rose’ as it were. We just want it to be over. Chances are, had I come across this little scene on my front porch today as opposed to a month ago I would have kicked the rock rather than seen the beauty in it. Winter does however offer a certain stillness and quietude, unlike any other season. The Japanese term Wabi-Sabi came to mind when I happened upon this little scene. Wabi refers to a quality of austere and serene beauty expressing a mood of spiritual solitude. Sabi refers to a thing which may be withered, aged, patinated. The term is often used in the design world to connote things beautiful in their simplicity and somewhat imperfect. Seems like something we all should aspire to—inside and out.
Dec31
Snowmaggedon, Snowicane, Snowpocalypse. The thing about being surrounded by nature is that no matter what the weather is doing, it’s all visually inspirational. My first winter here, so happy was I to be in the woods after years of being an urban-dweller, I would take long walks and marvel at the unexpected beauty of winter—the twist, the tangle, the sculptural aspect. I find winter more interesting, visually, than the other seasons—more mysteriously beautiful. There is more decay and entropy, all imperfection and abstraction. William Blake said “He who does not prefer form to color is a coward.” Although a bold statement, I tend to agree. 
I’ve found it much easier to stay connected to my intuition while in such close proximity to the natural world, and the shifting seasons encourage and support the creative process, allowing for a balance between stillness and activity—incubation and productivity. “In nature, the emphasis is on what is, rather than what ought to be”—Huston Smith
A Very Happy New Year to all!
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