- Henry Fox Talbot (1800 - 1877)
Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing
Saturday, October 15, 2022
Light, Shadow, and Geometry
Sunday, September 04, 2022
Luminous Beings
- Carlos Castaneda (1925 - 1998)
Tales of Power
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
Light Prancing
It can be found anywhere far from
where he lives or a few feet away.
It is always on his doorstep."
- Paul Strand (1890 - 1976)
Postscript. These images were all captured within minutes of each other in a garage near a local farmer's market this past weekend, as I was waiting for my wife to gather our grocery bags to go shopping. I have written before about how mesmerizing the "abstract cacophony" of shimmering reflections off car's hoods and hubcaps are to a photographer's eye 😊 What is hard to express in words (though I'm obviously trying, obliquely), is how joyful these few minutes' worth of prancing back and forth in-between park cars inevitably are to my soul (I look forward to my "light prancing" almost as much as the delicious recipes my wife cooks up with what we gather at the market!) My only regret (as usual) is that all I had with me was an iPhone.
Embrace light.
Admire it.
Love it.
But above all, know light.
Know it for all you are worth,
and you will know
the key to photography."
- George Eastman (1854 - 1932)
Saturday, July 23, 2022
Action Potential
- Ken Liu (1976 - )
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Sunday, February 20, 2022
Web of Time
strands of which approach
one another, bifurcate,
intersect or ignore each
other through the centuries,
embraces every possibility.
We do not exist in most of them.
In some you exist and not I,
while in others I do,
and you do not"
Friday, December 31, 2021
A Vast Pattern
Saturday, December 25, 2021
Perceive the Inconceivable
- Carlos Castaneda (1925 - 1998)
The Art of Dreaming
Sunday, December 12, 2021
A Magical Illusion
- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)
Friday, December 03, 2021
The Sentinel
"Think of such civilizations,
far back in time against the
fading afterglow of creation,
masters of a universe so
young that life as yet had come
only to a handful of worlds.
Theirs would have been
a loneliness of gods
looking out across infinity
and finding none to
share their thoughts."
Sunday, November 21, 2021
This Place is a Dream
Only a sleeper considers it real.
...
A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived,
and he dreams he's living
in another town.
He believes the reality of the dream town.
...
and then into being human,
forgotten our former states,
slightly recall being green again.
- Rumi (1207 - 1273)
Postscript. The triptych consists of three "quick grabs" with my iPhone during the trip my family and I took to the Pacific Northwest this past summer (e.g., see this blog entry). The left- and right-most images show the play of sunlight (reflected off the door of our car) with the pavement as we were going to breakfast one day in Sequim, WA. The middle panel shows a similar play of light (this time reflected off a kettle on our stove) with the stucco walls of the kitchen in the cabin we rented in the northern cascades. Most of my photography is quasi-deliberate, by which I mean that most of my images arise during planned "expeditions" (such as to a local park, or hikes on a family vacation 😊 using my "real" camera. But some of my favorite images - such the ones in this triptych - are captured purely by happenstance, and when my conscious "attention" lies elsewhere (such as on, say, getting breakfast at a restaurant or the first sip of coffee in the morning). Of course, any distinctions I may choose to draw among these various states of being and attention are, of course, at best illusory, and, at worst, utterly meaningless. Even as my "eye" looks toward the path to a restaurant or at the handle of a coffee kettle, my "I" never ceases to revel at the magic of light, color and form that surrounds us in each moment in time and space!
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Why is the sky blue?
Friday, November 12, 2021
A Moment or Two to Just Be
- Thich Nhat Hanh (1926 - )
Postscript. The picture above was captured not with my "real" camera but with my iPhone, whose ability to capture scenes such as this continues to impress. I was on a short "day job" related trip to the beautiful town of Newport, RI, and had a few precious moments of magic hour light at the Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge (just a few miles from the center of town). I was initially despondent over having not taken my real camera (and rationalized the "complexities" of mixing business with pleasure; what, with a laptop and pounds of technical notes already stuffed into my carry-on). I then got even more melancholy over having neglected to take my other "real" camera that I bought specifically for this purpose (an absurdly tiny but equally as absurdly capable digital camera I wrote about earlier this spring). But then I remembered Thich Nhat Hanh's sage advice (quoted above). Stilling my mind as best I could, and clutching my iPhone, I managed to find a moment or two to just be.
Friday, September 24, 2021
Universal Causation
- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
Saturday, September 18, 2021
Energy Field
of an energy field…
They are light waves with
mathematically precise lengths,
and they are deep,
resonant mysteries with
boundless subjectivity."
- Ellen Meloy (1946 - 2004)
The Anthropology of Turquoise
Friday, September 10, 2021
The Matrix of All Matter
- Max Planck (1858 - 1947)
Thursday, April 29, 2021
Patterns
- Oliver Sacks (1933 - 2015)
Postscript #1. The triptych consists of images I captured one day last summer after my wife parked her car in a garage near a local farmer's market. I was mesmerized by the "organized cacophony" of shimmering reflections off other car's hoods and hubcaps that arranged - and revealed - themselves to anyone interested in looking. Though I lamented not having my "real" camera, I was happy to have my iPhone to capture this lovely visual feast! Yet another gentle reminder that we must always be on alert to the universe's ceaseless wonders. And, though I rarely talk about the "nuts-and-bolts of photography on my blog (and much prefer posting images and musings than highlighting what f-stop I used), here's a small - hopefully useful - foray into the "nuts-and-bolts" department: to better prepare for unpredictable contingencies (i.e., for when I'm out and about without my usual shoulder and/or back-breaking warehouse-in-a-bag assortment of cameras, lenses, and filters), I recently purchased a tiny - almost babyish-looking - camera; albeit one that is fully functioning! Since it is designed to fit in even a child's pocket (!), I've resolved to always have it on my person when leaving the house for any reason. For those of you curious, it's Canon's G1X Mark III, which is best described as an ultra-miniaturized mirrorless version of their (older) 80D DSLR. While its fixed-lens is neither particularly bright nor sharp, the sensor is effectively the same one used on the 80D; yep, an APS-C sensor in a body that fits inside a shirt pocket! You can check out a review here. So far, I'm loving it, though have yet to post any pictures captured by it. But I suspect that'll soon change :)
Postscript #2. For those of you saddened by not having Oliver Sacks' sage wisdom around anymore (though his books forever enshrine his genius), there is a wonderful new biography available, called Oliver Sacks: His Own Life. Highly recommended!
Sunday, April 25, 2021
Geometry and Space
- Bernhard Riemann (1826 - 1866)
Sunday, April 18, 2021
Light of Skye
The mind, the Music breathing from her face,
The heart whose softness harmonised the whole —
And, oh! that eye was in itself a Soul!"
- Lord Byron (1788 - 1824)
Postscript. As photo-safari opportunities have dwindled (and though I do have a growing backlog of house-studio-facilitated abstracts to work on, as time permits), much of my "photo time" nowadays consists of discovering and reworking old images. This one is from the summer of 2009, captured during the first trip my wife and I took to Scotland; specifically, South Ronaldsay, one of the preternaturally beautiful Orkney Islands off Scotland's northeastern coast. The light there, as in all of Scotland, is not entirely of this world!
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Waves
that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing."
- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)