Greg Molyneux Photography

Tag: literary inspired

  • The Way of Walking Alone

    The Way of Walking Alone

    100mm macro photo of a dutiful bumblebee collecting pollen atop a fresh daisy blossom. The image is cross processed to give it a more moody tone.
    The Way of Walking Alone — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/1000

    Or The Way of Self-Reliance (Dokkōdō).

    I’ve started listening William Scott Wilson’s translation of Miyamoto Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings on Audible. As something of a budding Japanophile, and a person long into all things history, the study of The Way and Samurai culture rings true to my soul as a monk’s bell meditatively struck in morning. In the forward, Wilson translates the final lesson handed down from Mushashi to his disciples: 21 precepts outlining The Way of Walking Alone. The teachings of Japan’s sword-saint are open to us all, and I thought I’d share a bit here.

    • Do not turn your back on the various Ways of this world.
    • Do not scheme for physical pleasure.
    • Do not intend to rely on anything.
    • Consider yourself lightly; consider the world deeply.
    • Do not ever think in acquisitive terms.
    • Do not regret things about your own personal life.
    • Do not envy another’s good or evil.
    • Do not lament parting on any road whatsoever.
    • Do not complain or feel bitterly about yourself or others.
    • Have no heart for approaching the path of love.
    • Do not have preferences.
    • Do not harbor hopes for your own personal home.
    • Do not have a liking for delicious food for yourself.
    • Do not carry antiques handed down from generation to generation.
    • Do not fast so that it affects you physically.
    • While it’s different with military equipment, do not be fond of material things.
    • While on the Way, do not begrudge death.
    • Do not be intent on possessing valuables or a fief in old age.
    • Respect the gods and Buddhas, but do not depend on them.
    • Though you give up your life, do not give up your honor.
    • Never depart from the Way of the Martial Arts.

    Second Day of the Fifth Month, Second Year of Shoho [1645]
    —Shinmen Musashi

    Shout-out to Digital Dao for providing the online text as I did not transcribe this from the audio text.

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  • Green Sight

    Green Sight

    35mm square format photo of a lilac blossom. Shot wide open at f/1.4, it features soft focus and smooth bokeh, cross processed to a green hue.
    Green Sight — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/6400

    Were I to see into the future would I make this photograph?

    Would we do anything were we to see it beforehand? More so, would we have in our possession the power to stop ourselves? When and where would we even want to?

    Does our seeing a thing stop us from tracking it? Does our knowing a thing irrevocably change its course? Does its future sprout a new one?

    How can we know when our future is here? When the heart lifts and the gifts are easy, and you well know a place you’d swear you knew before.

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  • You See

    You See

    14mm wide angle HDR sunset photo capturing pastel color skies over Cedar Run Dock Road salt marsh.
    You See — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    You can visit the same place over and over for years, photograph it hundreds of times, and to quote the great Yogi Berra, “you can observe a lot by watching.” Which is to see one of my assumptions about the Cedar Run Dock Road salt marsh may be false. For years I operated, with certainty, the notion that come late June/early July the marsh grass would take on a special kind of green. A solid sea of newborn springtime green, uniform and lush. The marsh grass would grow long and the color it cast had such a lively glow that if you stared hard enough you’d think it breathing.

    Much of this notion stems from a single, formative photograph I made back in 2013. It was a pair of photographs, actually, yet I have but one posted here. South-facing, a summertime sun shower that to this day still holds a spot in my nine photo portfolio. Suggesting in and of itself I may be holding on to something too tight. This photo shows the marsh in all its green glory. From that point on, as the calendar flipped to June, I would hype on the great green return. Except it has turned more into the great green reckoning. Instead of a green shag carpet the marsh has taken on yellows and reds worked in among the green. I have also observed the grass has not grown quite as tall. Interesting.

    So what gives? Were I of a proper scientific mind it would be time to lay down a hypothesis, prepare an experiment, and record results. My observation, however late, as shown my years long hypothesis about greening to be wrong. Is there a way to demonstrate experimentally why? Can said experiment then be independently repeated by others and at other salt marshes? Of course I lack the skill and intellect to make any of this happen, but I will, as any laughable armchair scientist would, spitball the possibilities. I mean anti-intellectualism is en vogue no anyway, am I right?

    So here goes. Years of evidence suggests lush green is the exception and not the norm, at least over the past five years. Whatever happened prior is out of reach. So what happened back in the halcyon days of June 2013? I have a couple thoughts. One possibility is the presence of more fresh water in the salt marsh ecosystem. If not freshwater, then some kind of difference in the water table to facilitate lush growth and coloration. The second condition may have wholly been a factor of lighting. I made South-facing in late afternoon as a thunderstorm was pushing in over the marsh from west to east. Set against the darkened, rain filled clouds was a potent dose of golden sunlight. It is possible this let play affected the color of the grasses. I find this latter possibility more dubious, but for right now these two theories are all I have got. If any folks out there in the know what is actually up I would love you to take me to school.

    I will end this saunter through my mind’s eye with a quote by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “you see, but you do not observe.”

    Update [30 June 2019]: My smart and astute friend Staci dropped this clever insight on Facebook: “Hurricane Sandy, fall 2012. I posit that perhaps all of the detritus and chaos from that storm, toxic to the ecosystem or otherwise, could’ve had an impact.” This makes a lot of sense. Thanks, Staci.

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  • The Moon Was a Crescent

    The Moon Was a Crescent

    Crescent moonrise over salt marsh at blue hour.
    The Moon Was a Crescent — 100mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1.6 sec

    The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife. A pale sun rose and set and rose again. Red leaves whispered in the wind. Dark clouds filled the skies and turned to storms.

    —Bran III, A Dance with Dragons; volume five in A Song of Ice and Fire.

    Author George R. R. Martin, in one of his strongest, and most rhythmic chapters in A Song of Ice and Fire brings the reader into long, uninterrupted passage of time. Written with exacting precision, we, along with the moon and the characters therein, cycle through time as Bran trains with the Three-Eyed Raven. “The moon was fat and full… The moon was a black hole in the sky… The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife.” The cycle repeats no fewer than three times as readers work through Bran’s journey. Cold and lonely in a cave unseeing yet aware of the cold, cruel world outside. We endure the passage of time with our protagonist. Aware of both repetition, effort and duration. This takes peculiar significance with Bran who himself is able to take over the minds of others, man and beast. As readers, Martin is imploring us to do the same through his language. We become Bran in that cave.

    Recalling how I felt when I first read through this chapter I marvel at what Martin had done. His use of language, tone, rhythm and repetition stirring my imagination. I saw the moon. I experienced the time. I was with our hero feeling the burden of the work and paralyzed with the task ahead. I am not a prodigious reader, nor am I schooled in language, grammar or creative writing. Yet this chapter left a mark as though made from a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife. It took the habit of reading, and thereby the art of writing, to a new level of appreciation. For the first time I perceived how exacting words can move mind, body and soul. It was tangible evidence that reading is essential to better writing. It is the key to better storytelling. The key to better understanding of our world and our audience.

    Standing out on the marsh last week, watching a sunset fade, I saw the moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife. Immediately transported I saw all the sickled moon blades I’d witnessed over the years. In the same moment I was Bran. At the same moment still I was reading Martin’s words, seeing again all the sickled moon blades I’d witnessed over the years. Sharp as a knife, black as a hole, fat and full. Anything… everything happening at once, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife.

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  • There and Back Again

    There and Back Again

    Sunset photo burns over summer salt marsh.
    There and Back Again — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    A swollen tide with ease to lend
    Face kissed with salt the sweet scent friend.
    Your heart beats slow about an oxbow bend
    To the place you take there and back again.

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  • East Watch by the Sea

    East Watch by the Sea

    Sunset photo of pastel clouds over LBI beachfront property.
    East Watch by the Sea — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    The Saturday night burn was long and sweet. Like a lasting goodbye to the one we hold most dear. Sunset came, it saw, it conquered. Anxiety fell still to a palette so bright and unmoving it was as though the hands of time ceased to be. Seconds turned to minutes. The minutes, hours. And the hours into untold epochs circling the wheel of time only to flow back on itself. As if under a spell I floated from one patch of sand to the next. Bounding from spot to spot under an endless curtain of rainbow color. So bright was the evening air, as if by some device pinkish hues worked to seep upward from the ground as a warm bog might do when met with a cold morning. When time startled back to work the world fell slow toward a purple hush.

    For millennia at least three has been an auspicious number, and so it stands with a triumvirate symmetry that I walk away with no less than three photographs from my Saturday evening jaunt in Surf City. With the first and second already published, it is here I give you the third and perhaps final moment from an evening that will long rest in memory. As I was first learning my craft I was so consumed with photographing the scene that the moment itself was often lost on me. It was an honest greed that consumed me. A singular desire for one great shot, and often little else. Now with more seasoning to my tenure I am back to take on the moment as a means to its own end. The photographs cast as a supporting role to bolster the memory of the mind.

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  • False Spring

    False Spring

    Sunset photo with colorful clouds along the Long Beach Island bayside.
    False Spring — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    It’s been warm, folks. Strangely warm for February. Temperatures have ranged in the low- to mid-70s the past two days and it has many wondering if spring is already be upon us. Its tempting to give into the notion with nascent buds and bulbs beginning to show themselves early around much of the Mid-Atlantic. And while it’s easy to party like short sleeve weather is here to stay I cannot help but think back on the past few backloaded winters that have crushed any and all dreams of an early spring. With March looming I worry if we’ll pay the price for what has been otherwise a spectacular February. Will a prolonged cold snap of freezing temperatures lay waste to the early plant and flower growth leaving us with a less than stellar bloom? Time will tell—but hope springs eternal. Pardon my pun.

    On Long Beach Island this evening to make photos things were less warm. While temperatures still hung in the mid-50s cold bay and ocean water cast a reminder that we’ve still got a way to go. The micro climate is always something of a marvel. My house, which sits about five miles west of this photo as the crow flies, sat a good 15 degrees warmer than our barrier island. That’s just the way it goes; late to cool down in fall thanks to warm water, and late to heat up in spring thanks to cold water. That’s the ocean, folks—it’s big and it matters.

    My choice of title is surely a tie in to the early warmth and its transient tease (probably), but it’s more surely a hat tip to Mr. Cool Hat, George R. R. Martin himself. The sage of Westeros and author of A Song of Ice and Fire. The year of the false spring occurred at the time of the tourney at Harrenhal—a tournament which proved a watershed moment in triggering Robert’s Rebellion and the ensuing events that have become well known to book readers and television watchers alike. Winters are long and cold in Westeros, you guys, and climate change be damned at least we’re not dealing with the Long Night in our realm as yet. For the night is dark and full of terrors.

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  • Once More Unto the Breach

    Once More Unto the Breach

    Low key photo of a ramp descending into abandoned marina waters.
    Once More Unto the Breach — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/400

    People, can we take a moment to talk about this photograph? I try my best to avoid any and all self aggrandizement while beating my chest set atop a majestic horse who itself sets atop an ivory tower, but man, I am in love with this picture. Let’s start with the truthful reckoning: I in no way shape or form set out to make this photograph tonight. I went to what’s left of Rand’s Marina along Great Bay Boulevard in search of a sunset—the kind you’ve all seen here time and time again—yet I came home to find this diamond in the rough waiting for the figurative drill and polish. To be brutally honest I made this as something of a throwaway. I was doing my usual handheld single shot investigation of the premises trying to lock in my final composition where I’d then set my camera upon its tripod only to mill about, fiddle with my phone, and wait for the sun to set. And while I remember staring down the viewfinder when making this one-off I had a brief, well this has an interesting look to it thought fly in and out of my skull. It was the ramp descending into nothingness that was noteworthy at the time. From there I went to a different spot entirely to take my sunset position and wait.

    However once I got home and imported into Lightroom its potential started to command my attention. With a few preset and slider manipulations I landed on this brooding, low key wonder. It was perfect. The intensity. The mood. The loneliness. The power. All of it speaks to me in ways I struggle to articulate. I can’t say I’ve ever been moved quite like this by my own work before—even falling back to my art class days of painting and drawing. Somehow something has clicked here. Perhaps it’s the far departure from my typical work? Maybe it’s the happy accident that led me here? Or maybe still it’s something I can’t yet figure out? All I can say is that I pleased by the emptiness and depth this image evokes.

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