"Photographing the Photographer" Diptychs

"The universe as we know it

is a joint product of the

observer and the observed.”

- Teilhard de Chardin

Philosopher / Mystic

(1881 - 1955)

While looking over some old photos (going back to trips to Scotland in 2009 and Greece in 2008), I ran across an interesting set of pictures taken by my wife that I turned into what I call PPDs, or "Photographing the Photographer" Diptychs. My wife, an avid videographer and occasional still photographer, took a series of images showing yours truly in the act of "doing" photography.

Some of her photos contain "me" only in the sense that I am somewhere in the picture, but the shot itself is focused on something else; a landscape, our rental car, a hotel, the front of a restaurant, whatever. But many of them are (as my wife confessed) deliberately focused on my (not always elegant) photo machinations: my scurrying to and fro like a frenzied zombie, climbing, prowling, bending, scrunching up like a pretzel, maneuvering my body and tripod for decent angles. A few actually catch me in the "act" of going click.

For many of these I was able to find and match the "shot" I was capturing (or a shot taken at nearly the same place and time) with the shot my wife has of me doing so. I made a few diptychs to show my wife and friends, who all enjoyed them, commenting that the diptychs reveal something not normally seen, or appreciated.

The diptychs show two different - but obviously correlated - experiences by two different people of ostensibly the same "experience" (almost the same). While my wife and I were obviously both at the same place and time, we were looking at the world from our own (not quite identical) local reference frames and slightly different perspectives: she, as an empathic observer of "life (in this case, her husband's) in environment," and I, as landscape photographer immersed in Scotland's innate physical beauty. To my eyes, our respective images of a given time and place, combined in diptych form, achieve an interesting transcendent synergy. While neither image, if considered alone, shows anything more than it does by itself, when reflected upon simultaneously with its partner provides a tangibly more meaningful, deeper glimpse of our shared experience.

I have posted a small portfolio of ten such "Photographing the Photographer" Diptychs (8 from Scotland, 2 from Greece); if nothing else, it gave me an opportunity to revisit some of the many spectacular sights and visual delights my wife and I have been privileged to see. It also gives an opportunity to those of you (you know who you are ;-) who have, from time to time, seen a bespectacled photographer bent over a tripod somewhere, seemingly trained at nothing in particular, and been puzzled about just what this bespectacled photographer is looking at? My wife has kindly provided an answer.

Beauty and Wonder

"Both the grand and
the intimate aspects of
nature can be revealed in
the expressive photograph.
Both can stir enduring
affirmations and discoveries,
and can surely help
the spectator in his search
for identification with the
vast world of natural beauty and
the wonder surrounding him."
- Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)

"Beauty is eternity gazing
at itself in a mirror."
- Kahlil Gibran
(1883-1931)

Time as an Illusory River

"When you touch one thing
with deep awareness,
you touch everything."
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Buddhist Monk / Author
(1926 - )

"Time is the substance
from which I am made.
Time is a river
which carries me along,
but I am the river;
it is a tiger that
devours me,
but I am the tiger;
it is a fire
that consumes me,
but I am the fire. "
- Jorge Luis Borges
Author / Essayist
(1899 - 1986)

Path of Paths

"You must always keep in mind that a path is only a path. Each path is only one of a million paths. If you feel that you must now follow it, you need not stay with it under any circumstances. Any path is only a path. There is no affront to yourself or others in dropping a path if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on a path or to leave it must be free of fear and ambition. I caution you: look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone this one question. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same. They lead nowhere. They are paths going through the brush or into the brush or under the brush of the Universe. The only question is: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then it is a good path. If it doesn’t, then it is of no use."

- Carlos Castaneda
Anthropologist / Author
(1925 - 1998)

Beauty, Mystery, and Truth

"Now I was suddenly made aware of another world of beauty and mystery such as I had never imagined to exist, except in poetry. It was as though I had begun to see and smell and hear for the first time... I experienced an overwhelming emotion in the presence of nature, especially at evening. It began to wear a kind of sacramental character for me... I felt again the presence of an unfathomable mystery. The song of the birds, the shapes of the trees, the colours of the sunset, were so many signs of this presence, which seemed to be drawing me to itself."

- Bede Griffiths
Benedictine Monk
(1906 - 1993)

"Mystery is truth's dancing partner."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(1749 - 1832)

Art, World, Transcendence

“In kindergarten we drew three daffodils that

had just been picked out of the yard;
and while I was drawing,
my sharpened yellow pencil and the
cup of the yellow daffodils
gave off whiffs just alike.
That the pencil doing the
drawing should give off the
same smell as the flower it
drew seemed part of the art lesson.
Children, like animals, use all their
senses to discover the world.
Then artists come along and
discover it the same way, all over again.”
— Eudora Welty
Author / Photographer
(1909-2001)

“In one way or another,
the Cosmos we inhabit -
human body, house, territory,
world - communicates from
above with another
level which is transcendent.”
— Mircea Eliade
Philosopher
(1907-1986)

One Shoot Sunday: An Interview

I was invited recently by Chris Galford (a manager with the online publication One Stop Poetry) to participate in an "email interview." Our exchange (along with a sampling of my images) was published earlier this morning. While I was honored to be asked to participate - the website has archived an impressively varied selection of interviews with talented photographers that one can spend hours perusing and being inspired by! - I was truly humbled by the wealth of creativity that my humble little "Homage to Friedrich" image (reproduced here) spawned from readers of the interview!

Since the focus of the One Stop Poetry site is to foster a dialog between visual and verbal artforms, the interview concluded with a challenge to readers: namely, to write a poem that is inspired by the accompanying image (called the "Skies of Skye," that appears in my Scotland portfolio).

I was deeply moved by both the number - and sheer beauty - of responses to the challenge! My favorites (though, in truth, I must really list them all, as they are all exceptional!)- and in no particular order - are poems by Pete Marshall, Gigi Ann, Claudia, Louise Gallagher, Adam Dustus, Glynn Young, Tammy, Maureen, Melissa Campbell, Ruth, Ranee Dillon, Hedgewitch, Libithina, and the ones on the Reflections of..., She's Writing, and Another Man's Dream blogs. I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to read my interview, and even more so for the time and effort they put in to posting such wonderful works of poetic art on their own sites.

Kudos to all!

Postscript #1: I have written of this "poetry challenge" image before on my blog (see here). The image was taken near Teangue, Skye, on the next to last day of our trip to Scotland in 2009 (before we headed off to Edinburgh to catch our flight back to the states). The sun was setting, but we had a bit of time for some last minute exploration. I was busy taking close-up shots of rocks and water, with my back toward the water where my wife was standing (I was in my usual crouched position, glaring starry-eyed at the compositional marvels on the exposed beach, and - also, as usual ;-) - "oblivious" to what I was really searching for ;-) I finally stood up to give my knees a rest, and while stretching my back swung around to look for my wife. What I saw I was magic and thus not something that can easily be translated either into words or images, but I did manage to catch a fleeting glimpse of the ineffable with my camera. What it recorded is reproduced in the photograph above, and is among my top three favorite images from our entire trip.

Postscript #2: While on the subject of interviews, here is a link to an interview I did with Brooks Jensen (editor, Lenswork magazine) for my Micro Worlds portfolio that Lenswork published in issue #76 (May-June, 2008). The mp3 version runs ~40 min, but (unfortunately) is not free; cost is 99 cents (proceeds go entirely to Lenswork).

Solo Show at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, VA

Part of the reason I have been remiss in updating my blog recently (apart from the usual demands of my day job) is that I've been preparing for what I am now very pleased to announce. Namely, a solo show at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Virginia. More specifically, at the Market Street Bar & Grill that is attached to the Hyatt, at street level, at 1800 Presidents Street, Reston, VA, 20190 (if you click on the link to the Hyatt Regency, the entrance to the Bar and Grill appears in the main picture at the top of the page that pops up). There will be 24 works in all, about equally divided between my abstracts and landscapes (including a few new prints from the trip my wife and I took to Scotland last year). I also plan on bringing about 20 or so smaller prints (matted but sans frame, in a plastic slipcase) for people to look over at the reception, but that - due to lack of sufficient wall space - will not be an "official" part of the exhibit.

Sponsored by the Greater Reston Arts Center, the opening reception will be Monday, February 8, 2010, 5 - 7 pm. The exhibit will run through April 19, 2010.

For those of you in the area, and wishing to attend, the Hyatt has been kind enough to promise to provide a delicious spread of specialty appetizers, offer each guest a complimentary glass of select wine, and if - after the reception - any guests desire to stay for dinner, to take 20% off the total cost of each of their meals (provided they bring the flyer for the reception, link below)!

So, please come out to look at some photos, chat, muse, have a glass of wine, and maybe even enjoy a nice discounted meal :-) I hope to see you there!

A flyer for the reception may be downloaded here.

The Ring o' Brodgar, Stenness

The Ring o' Brodgar is one of the four Neolithic monuments that make up the Heart of Neolithic Orkney (a name adopted by UNESCO when it declared these sites as a World Heritage Site in 1999). The other three sites of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney are (1) Maeshowe (a chambered cairn, whose central chamber is aligned so that it is precisely illuminated during the winter solstice; it also contains one of the most extensive collections of Viking runic inscriptions in the world); (2) Skara Brae (a Neolithic settlement dating back to about 3100-2500 BC, and located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of Orkney, Scotland); and (3) Standing Stones of Stenness (which are four megaliths not too far from the Ring o'Brodgar, the largest of which is about 19 ft tall).

The Ring o'Brodgar is 340 ft in diameter, and originally contained 60 stones, of which 27 still stand today. The stones - which range in height from about 7 feet to a maximum of a little over 15ft - are set within a circular ditch up to 10 deep, 30 ft wide and 1,200 ft in circumference that was carved out of the solid sandstone bedrock.

It is unknown when the site was built, by whom, or for what purpose (though there are many speculations of course: see, for example, this book by Christopher Knight and Alan Butler, that connects sidereal days, pendulums, the "Minoan foot" - an ancient unit of measure used for the construction of palaces in Crete c.2000 BC - and the planet Venus). Current best estimates place its origin at between 2500 BC and 2000 BC.

More details about the Ring o'Brodgar, and the other monuments making up the Heart of Neolithic Orkney, can be found in this report, published by Historic Scotland.

Personal Note. My wife and I visited the Ring o'Brodgar several times during our stay in Orkney. We were both drawn to its mystery, and enchanted by its timeless aura. As I wandered around with my camera, looking for angles and compositions, dodging the inevitable tourists (such as ourselves) to get clear shots of the stones alone, I felt myself drift in and out of the time of the "here and now" into a more ancient, and ineffable, time; a time that lurks somewhere in the shadows, and is a part of the very fabric of the megaliths themselves.

Mindful observers are seduced with glimpses of a parallel world that coexists with ours, but whose essence transcends the "normal" dimensions perceivable via our physical senses alone.

The Ring o'Brodgar is - for me - a physical symbol of timelessness and transcendence. It is a place for serious contemplation and meditation. A boundary between all that has been forgotten and the just as mysterious unknown future history that is yet to be written.

Through it all - immersed in time (and succumbing to time's inexorable gift of entropy), yet strangely unaffected by it (since its secrets are too old for even time to recall their true origins) - the Ring o'Brodgar's eerie silence beckons with its magical siren call.

I've posted a gallery of shots from our Scotland trip here.

Chiocchetti's and Palumbo's Gift of the Soul to Orkney

Orkney (Scotland) and war, of one kind or another, have a long intertwined history. Scapa flow, for example, which is the name of the sea that surrounds the Orkney Islands, is one of the great natural anchorages of the world, serving as a harbor for Viking ships more than 1000 years ago. More recently, it was the site of the United Kingdom's chief naval base during both WWI and WWII (the base closed in 1956).

It was in WWII, in early 1942, that over 500 Italian prisoners of war (captured in North Africa), were brought over to Orkney to help construct the Churchill Barriers (a fortication ordered built by Churchill, following a German U-boat sinking of the HMS Royal Oak in 1939, an attack that took the lives of 833 members of the Royal Oak's crew). However, since a treaty prevented prisoners of war from working on military-related projects, the Churchill Barriers became roads linking the southern islands of Orkney together (a function they still serve today). But the barriers were not the only project these Italian prisoners of war had worked on.

A small hillside on the north side of the island of Lamb Holm overlooks the most northerly of the Churchill Barriers. On it is a small and (from the outside) modest appearing chapel that is now know as the Italian Chapel. A glimpse of the soulful beauty of the chapel's inside is given by the image at the top of this blog entry (the other "side" of the chapel, the part that visitors walk through as they enter, is simply an austere vestibule; if anything, its simple unadorned appearance intensifies the grand vision that immediately grabs hold of all visitors' attention).

During the years 1942-1945, the hill was where the Italian prisoners of war lived (at Camp 60). By all accounts, however, Camp 60 was infused with an unexpected aesthetic. The prisoners built footpaths (using concrete that was readily available for the barriers), gardens, and vegetable plots. They also set to work on a place of worship, culminating - under the leadership of prisoners Chiocchetti and Palumbo (who designed the wrought iron rood screen) - in the Italian chapel. The chapel is a mini artistic-masterpiece, and stands as a living testament to the indomitable will of the human heart and soul.

The Skies of Skye and Orkney

As difficult a task as it is to point to a single distinguishing feature of Scotland that stands out in my photographic eye - for so much of Scotland simply transcends an aesthetic breakdown of any kind; Scotland's beauty must be experienced and cannot be verbalized (nor, perhaps, even be photographed in a way that captures its deepest secrets) - I will start my musings on the recent trip my wife and I took to Scotland by recalling the magnificent skies of Skye and Orkney.

"The great plain of Caithness opens before our eyes. This is the northland, the land of exquisite light. Lochs and earth and sea pass away to a remote horizon where a suave line of pastel foothills cannot be anything but cloud. Here the actual picture is like a picture in a supernatural mind and comes upon the human eye with the surprise that delights and transcends memory. Gradually the stillness of the far prospect grows unearthly. Light is silence. And nothing listens where all is of eternity." - Neil Gunn, Highland River (1937)

My previous benchmark for varied dramatic skies was Hawaii, where the weather changes on a dime and the interested observer / photographer can find dozens of different "skies" in any given hour on any part of the islands. But Scotland's skies leave their Hawaiian cousins far in their wake. I have never before seen such dynamic, textured, layered, epic-scale Wagnerian colossī as the "seas of clouds" on Skye and Orkney.

The drama was often so great, and the magic light so fast moving and changing, that all I could do to keep up was to simply click away, mechanically, unable to take in all of the spectacle unfolding before me, behind me, all around me. Once, on our first day on Orkey, even before we arrived at our hotel in Kirkwell after arriving by ferry at Stromness, a spectacular sunset begged us to pull over to the side of the road, and as I was setting up my tripod to catch a sunset, a fantastic - phantasmagorical! - rainbow appeared to the east; as my attention was diverted, my wife screamed that another rainbow was forming to the south! There we both stood, slack-jawed, swaying gently in the Orkney wind, in awe of nature's beauty at its finest. I had even momentarily "forgotten" to do anything with my camera; as my conscious and unconscious minds fused into one and my attention was focused solely on the experience. Such deep ego-disappearing total immersion in the moment, as we soon learned, is the norm for being in Scotland. (It is thus easy to understand the origin of some folk tales, such as the one about Herla - the "wise King of the Britons in ancient times" - who once visited an underworld realm, where he was lavishly entertained with song and dance. But upon returning to his own world, King Herla discovered that centuries had passed!)

"From the high summit watch the dawn come up behind the Orkneys, see the mountain ranges of Sutherland the grey planetary light that reveals the earth as a ball turning slowly in the immense chasm of space, turn again to the plain of Caithness that land of exquisite light and be held by myriad lochs and dubh lochs glimmering blood red." - Neil Gunn, Highland River (1937)

As dramatic as the skies of Orkey are, Skye brings an added dimension (or two or three) to the landscape, literally. For as relatively flat as Orkey is (though it has its fair share of rolling hills and cliffs!) and is devoid of vegetation, the many rolling mountains and jagged peaks of Skye make it a veritable mini-Himalaya, along with its enormous array of beautiful lowland flowers.

I soon noticed a distinct change in my compositions. Where, in Orkney, my eye tended to mostly ignore foreground detail (for, in truth, there was little to be had except an occasional but uninteresting rock or twig) and focus on clouds and sky with a bit of a horizon, in Skye, my camera was taking in the full view from my feet to as far away as my lens could take me! Moreover, because of the lovely colors, I also found myself - very uncharacteristically - thinking and previsualizing in color! I thought back to last year's trip to Santorini, Greece, where I had a related (but very different) experience with "color versus B&W" visualization. In Santorini's case, however, my thoughts on the matter crystalized after I had returned home and was viewing my images in Lightroom. This time, in Skye, the utterly un-ignorable effervescent colors compelled me to adapt my photography from B&W to color on the spot! While this may not sound like a "big deal" to most readers, I can assure you that for one, such as myself, who is almost exclusively a B&W photographer and therefore tends strongly to view the world in B&W, the shift was very dramatic (and, in hindsight, very enjoyable). Perhaps I can use this experience as a stepping stone / learning experience to widen my photographic horizons a bit.

"My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go."
- Robert Burns, My Heart's in the Highlands

The Preturnaturally Sublime Beauty of Scotland

The recent paucity of blog entries may be explained (at least in part) by the fact that my wife and I have been traveling all over Scotland; Edinburgh, Inverness, Loch Ness, Orkney, and Skye to be precise. We have just returned from our trip, after logging a bit over 1100 miles by car.

It was a magnificent trip, overflowing with memorable experiences and spectacular landscapes. Having brought back the equivalent of 40GB+ of raw files (my Hyperdrive was indispensable!), I look forward to the many digital darkroom days/nights it will take to process them all. As individual images warrant, and as I recall the stories surrounding them, I'll be posting some musings in the weeks ahead.

From a bird's eye view - as a whole, in Gestalt form - Scotland is a sublime, preternatural wonder of equal measures drama and serenity; it pulses with a quiet soulful elegance and beauty all its own. From its tranquil green pastures (punctuatued by the "baah-baahs" of its sheep and "moooooos" of its Highland cows), to its rugged coastlines, to its majestic Wagnarian-like skies and clouds, to the magnificent wind-swept jagged peeks of the mountains on the isle of Skye, to its many Castles and pre-historical sites (such as Maeshowe and Ring of Brodgar, both dating back to before 2500BC), Scotland is a land of almost infinitely diverse terrains and vistas. Its people are warm and friendly, its delicious food is as memorable, in its own way, as are its landscapes (though my wife enjoyed Haggis far more than I), and its single malt whiskys are second to none (our personal favorites on this trip were Highland Park and Glenmorangie)!

The one nasty part of our trip was driving in Edingurgh (1) without a GPS and (2) while the Fringe festival is going on. It is difficult enough for two people accustomed to driving on the right side of the road (in the US) to switch to left-side driving in Scotland (though this part was easy to adapt to), but when faced with street closures and "Diverted Traffic" signs (seemingly posted every other street), navigating Edinburgh proved almost impossible. That we did so the first time around while also sleep-deprived after overcoming what amounted to a 36 hour multi-leg plane trip that finally got us over to Scotland, borders on the unreal; certainly that is how my wife and I both remember it;-) Our experience has thus led to a new sacrosanct Ilachinski "trip rule": never, ever - ever! - drive a car in a major foreign city without a GPS and before getting at least one good night's rest. (Sacrosanct trip "sub rule": if the major foreign city has a festival going on, don't drive under any conditions!).