It is 31 December and I am out of days. It looks like this will be the last backlog photograph I get to post in 2023. So let’s roll back to 5 September and my backyard hibiscus. Not a ton of floral macro work this year, so it feels good to close out the year with this low key, cross process shot.
2024 is mere hours away. Let’s get after it. Be excellent to each other.
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You don’t need me to tell you life is an all out blur these days. An all out conflagration of the senses; body, mind and soul blasted by a raging inferno of the world’s lit fuse. Our defenses bested, our heat shields destroyed. Systems are critical and who will quench us now?
It is here and now we must look to ourselves and to our small pockets of control. Let’s do what we can to keep things neat and tidy, lest the traveling embers of wonton destruction set our own backyards ablaze. Things may look and feel hopeless, with authoritarianism, strife, conflict, and death on the move. We must not allow such malevolent actors strip away the clear view to what matters most in this world—each other, our children, our communities. Instead of a sniping some stranger with a quick hit feel good response of toxic emotion, give yourself a moment or three to respond with the soothing power of love and grace. It is our kindness and compassion that will save the world.
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July light fades a pink kiss goodbye. The worn one knows well not to believe the false promises softened in its pastel glow. Sirens of lies singing us onto the rocks of the forever young. Stay here forever and there will be no pain or woe. Life as it is with light moves on indifferent to any one plight or pleasure. For the Universal Powers have big work to do and none of it includes waiting on you.
We stand afield planted, seeded and watered to grow only to wear and wither in but an eye blink of Big Time. In our winking we open ourselves to the beauty of worlds both big and small. People, places, and things to make us whole and worth it. This warmth buzzes about in orbit to pollinate our lives with richness and love.
Then comes the crisis. The light fades stealing with it the freedom and innocence. It moves on unburdened as the oily peddler selling death in a bottle. Rooted the worn one wanes alone, naked and afraid.
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The April Fool tramples his path
Running roughshod through this world
Joyous conceit
Close-minded and haughtily assured
Gilded, unperturbed
Dazzled masses froth over such trappings
The success, the power, the sprawling paper card manse propped up on the hill
How do I get mine?
Follow the April Fool
For he knows not he knows nothing
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And now for something completely different. I made my way to Batsto Village on Sunday. Autumn peak is still a ways out, but the short jaunt made for a solid photowalk regardless. Temperatures were warm with mostly masked park goers aplenty. It was one of those dress for all seasons kind of days. Toasty in the sun, cool in the shade. As my friends played about with their tiny humans, I meandered listlessly about the old iron works village. Some noticeable changes since my photowalk in 2014, including the loss of some large maple trees. Such is the passage of time.
I spent ten minutes with my camera making photos of a building I once described as a weird barn-esque pseudo covered bridge type building sided in evenly spaced, repetitive wood slats. The leading lines speak to me. There is an old, weathered door with a rusted iron loop which once made part of a locking mechanism. Above is the photograph, treated in sepia to lend visual to the structure’s age. I’m not certain what to call this kind of photography? Street? Architectural? Nonsense? I suspect this is one of those photos I enjoy but doesn’t land well with the masses. But that’s OK!
Music and the world lost an icon and virtuoso today. Rest easy, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen. The stardust of the riff master has returned to the universe.
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Dutiful honey bee plying her trade. Drinking her nectar and loading her pollen basket, she works with intent. With energy and purpose she minds her craft. Even alone the hive is on the mind. Her community needs her; needs her singular focus to feed and to provide. To sustain the group. Bounding atop pistils by day, she works the land spending hours at the harvest. Undaunted she holds fast to her task. Mindfulness dams distraction. Even the focused lens of the observer matter little to our indefatigable worker bee. She need not pay us any mind—she strives for the hive.
As ever, thank you, John Lennon, for enriching our lives with joy. Thanks for your classic song connecting to this lyrically inspired photo. A working class hero is something to be(e).
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Challenges move as a summer wind. Storm clouds smoke to the horizon. Roiling cloud tops bubble and push to the sky, a fierce beacon girded in unyielding white. It makes a stark contrast to the gray underbelly paved in turmoil beneath. An archetype of the inevitable, the storm will rise. The gust front heralds its great coming. A flush of wind and the onslaught gale meets to the crack of thunder, our souls left scoured in the windswept rain. Life and land buckles, the seas pick up, and our world holds fast.
And then, as if in an instant, the power yields. The wind sits, the clouds break, and the late day sun works through, driving a shaft of light to chase off the din. Passed is the storm; subdued fear left in its wake. The world wakes up—resilient and renewed. Bathed in rich light all is brighter, thoughts are clearer with purpose resolving in sharp contrast. Our spirit tempered and charged. Battered by the storm and buttressed by a resolve before unknown, left purified in the waters of renewal we find the courage to grow.
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It is in evening blue light when the day’s last comings glow, ebbing slow each night as the final light of day goes. It is a soft kiss, a gentle embrace as day shares love with her partner night. For a few moments the two poles dance together, igniting passion in the pastel embers of yearning. It is devotion writ large, a passion play painting tenderness on nature’s most dramatic stage. Ensconced our lovers intwine but twice each day, and they are here to teach us whenever we choose to learn.
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Black, white, and all the shades of gray coloring the in between. Mix in a dash of soft focus and toss with a hit of certainty in a cauldron of abstraction and you have yourself a recipe for creation. While it may not jive with many folks, I love this kind of photograph; varied shades of grayscale values distilled down to abstract forms painting with light and movement.
In this photograph I am making creative use of daffodil stems. Photographed at close range, a distance of about 15 inches, with a 100mm macro lens with an f/3.5 aperture. This arrangement allowed me to execute a shallow depth of field, juxtaposing the foreground of focused daffodil stems flowing free while rendering plenty of bokeh across the photo’s blurred background.
When I look upon this photo my mind sees the flowing movement of long grasses underwater. Submerged and swaying with the rush of the tide. It’s a balanced fluid motion, a soft rocking back and forth carrying us away to far off places. Relaxing spaces full of soft beds, kind hearts, and unbridled hope. Just because a thing is void of color does not mean it is void of life, energy, complexity, and passion. Let this be a lesson in all things.
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