A Quiet Sunday

just a quiet picture for a quiet Sunday

Stopping Time

one of the things i love so much about making photographs ~ and there are many, many things i love ~ is how the process slows down time.  when you explore your world with your camera in hand, you gradually begin to expand and focus your vision.   as your sight intensifies, all your senses are heightened to an acute level, and you enter the tranquil cocoon of now.  the past and the future vanish in the power of the present.  you become so locked in the moment, time ceases to exist.  it is a sublime, and addictive experience.

as summer passes into fall, and we find ourselves another season older, stop for a minute, with or without your camera, and really look at the world around you.  take the time to stop time. enter the moment and leave your life behind.

The Last Day of Summer

to thank Bill for his two cents...

In The Sweet Grass Hills ~ Requiem

For the time being, earth and sky.
For the time being, body.

For the time being, nights of magpie blue,
mornings of salt white clouds winging over.

For the time being, eagle.
Eye to eye with the sun at noon,

I enter these hills of sweet grass,
sage, wild rose, and rock ---
bringing nothing with me,
       a wild solitude in the smoke
                              I please to call my soul.

- Margaret Gibson

to blog or not to blog

i think i'm going to give this blogging thing a go for purely selfish reasons.  here's why...

i first began studying photography in 2001.  before that i never took pictures, i wrote.  i wrote for a weekly newspaper.  i wrote poetry.  i tried to write several novels and failed abysmally.  i think 30 pages was as far as i ever got.  i wrote daily in many, many journals.  i usually had at least two or three going at one time because i am a sucker for beautiful notebooks.  i can't stop myself from buying them.  in short, i was drowning in words.

then photography came along.  no words.  no thoughts.  just vision, sensation, reaction, liberation.  i was freed from the confines of my brain and i expanded into the universe.  i was instantly hooked on this wordless world, and i have followed photography's quiet path with great joy for the past 10+ years.

over those years i have continued to write, but in short, quickly jotted sentences... ideas, thoughts, observations, quotes...  no long, analytical pages of  developed reasoning.  i think, perhaps, this absence of words, of deep thought, has prevented my photography from growing and evolving as i would like it to.  i think it may be time for me to bring words into my photography practice.  and this from a woman who abhors artist statements.

i believe words and images can work together to the benefit of both.  that's why i've chosen this image, Intersecting Paths.  this blog will afford me the opportunity to test this hypothesis.  stay tuned.  things could get interesting around here.

in the dark

i was in the darkroom yesterday, after a couple of days of producing satisfying, but basically ho hum work, when this image appeared in the developer.  i wasn't really expecting much from the image since it was a tad overexposed on my contact sheet and didn't appear too exciting.  i certainly wasn't expecting my heart to stop with excitement.  but it did.  i couldn't stop looking at this simple tree in the sunlight.  it was perfect.  i quickly developed three more prints and then went on working.
this morning, based on past experience, i anticipated a huge letdown when i went into the darkroom to look at the print again, now curled and dry on the rack.  i never like my work the day after printing.  it always looks drab and boring and trite and why am i wasting my time creating this rubbish.  trees died for this, you know?
for some inexplicable reason, i still loved this image.  even without the wonderful water sheen that coats an image when you pull it from the wash.  it still made me happy and proud and eager to take another picture and develop another print.
this got me to wondering... why?  why this image?  what is it in this tiny black and white print that makes my heart sing?
first, i think, it's the simplicity.  it's just a tree in the sunlight.  nothing more, but that's all it needs to be.  it's also the textures.  the way the bark of the tree echos the grittiness of the wall.  it's the dance of the leaves and the dappled light.  it's the wonder of this little tree growing from the concrete of a busy Manhattan cross street.  finally, it's the fact that these miraculous moments are occurring right now, all around us, and all we have to do is venture out, slow down and take a look.

a misty morning between the trees

my new friend Bill (and sole follower) recently suggested that i begin posting some of my work here on my nascent blog.  i will begin by posting just this one image.  i took it in my backyard early on a foggy morning.  i think i was still in my pajamas.  i saw the fog.  i saw the sun beginning to break through the mist.  i pulled on shoes, grabbed my camera and raced out the back door.  i was lost in the fog for several hours and three rolls of black and white film.  i would have stayed forever, but i ran out of film.

in the ten years that i have been seriously practicing photography, i have discovered that most of my best images come from places i return to over and over again... like my simple backyard.  because it is comfortable, familiar territory, i look deeper, and i find i go beyond the surface of things with greater ease.  i am relaxed.  i feel safe.   and i can move rather smoothly into the photographer's zone.  what my friend Bill calls the state of "listening with your eyes."  i think that's a perfect description.  your senses are heightened and you are attuned to all that is around you.  you see new things.  you feel new sensations.  everything almost tingles and glows. 

that is why i love photographing my world so very much... it always takes me to a new place, even when i'm just standing in my old, humdrum backyard.  that's magical.

a couple years later...

read a thought-provoking blog today, Paul Romaniuk's The Bertie Project, about photography in the digital age. i felt compelled to respond to his blog, and my response led me back to this blog, created several years ago and promptly forgotten. since i have no idea how to delete posts, thought i'd post a quick update...

--have changed the title of the blog.

--have no expectations that anyone will ever read this.

--love the fact that i'm returning to this blog just as everyone is predicting the death of blogs.

--cannot figure out whether all this internet stuff is beneficial or just dust in the wind.

--have created a web site. have created a facebook profile and page.

--no twitter. no google+. just a name on linked-in.

--too many passwords for this tired brain.

--no pinterest... thank god.

--it's overwhelming.

--how do i simplify?

--do i even want to indulge?

where i belong is behind the camera, or in the darkroom. not sitting in front of a computer wasting time and talking to the vast empty void of cyberspace.

so i remain totally confused and conflicted.

--do i go with my private journals or the potentially not-so-private blog?

--do i continue to create and manage my cyber identity, or just try to be content with my actual self in the flesh and blood world?

it's hard enough being me. do i really want to be a cyber me?

i'll get back to you in a couple years. i'm heading out now to crouch behind a few trees and take some photographs.