Sunflowers

The Sunflowers

~ Mary Oliver

Come with me

    into the field of sunflowers.

        Their faces are burnished disks,

           their dry spines

creak like ship masts,

    their green leaves,

       so heavy and many,

           fill all day with the sticky

sugars of the sun.

     Come with me

         to visit the sunflowers,

             they are shy

but want to be friends;

   they have wonderful stories

       of when they were young --

           the important weather,

the wandering crows.

Don't be afraid

to ask them questions!

Their bright faces,

which follow the sun,

will listen, and all

those rows of seeds --

each one a new life! --

hope for a deeper acquaintance;

each of them, though it stands

in a crowd of many,

like a separate universe,

is lonely, the long work

of turning their lives

into a celebration

is not easy.  Come

and let us talk with those modest faces,

the simple garments of leaves,

the coarse roots in the earth

so uprightly burning.



Homestead Sunflowers, 2011

This poem was read at my mother's memorial service by her dear friend Shirley Beckman.

It holds a special place in my heart... as do sunflowers.

A Post A Day

i am going to endeavor to post every day for a month.  the post may only be an image, a quote, a poem or a link to something i love, but i will try to post something every single day. 

i undertook this type of project several years ago with my photography.  i'm sure those of you who are photographers are familiar with the roll a day assignment ~ you shoot a roll of film every day for a given length of time.  i did it, successfully, for a month and learned a great deal about the way i see, about what my eye is subconsciously attracted to.  i also learned to push myself outside of my comfort zone in order to avoid creating repetitive images.  i learned discipline and dedication, forcing myself to shoot even when the weather was awful or i was tired or the hour was late.  i learned that one keeper image on a roll of film qualifies as a successful shoot.  and, i amassed a large number of new and exciting images.  this self-assignment also forced me to develop and print religiously in order to keep up with the work produced. 

i don't know if doing the same thing with the blog will be as beneficial, but i've decided to give it a try.  i think the hardest part may be coming up with post titles every day.  something tells me they may go by the wayside.

Great Lake Sacandaga, 2012

p.s. on days when i have no access to Lou's computer (the only computer we own that i can post pictures from) i will try to make up the missed day with an extra post, or an extra long post.  here goes nothing... or, fingers crossed, maybe something.

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.