A Borgesian Wink and a small Gift to readers of my Blog

As a small thank you to all the kind visitors of my blog - think of it as a holiday gift - please feel free to download an extended version of my "Icelandic Abstracts" portfolio that was just published in the Dec issue of Lenswork magazine (and whom I thank for allowing me to offer it as a freebie here); clicking on the triptych above will take you to a 22MB Adobe pdf file. While it is always a thrill to be published in Lenswork (that belongs at the top of any list of the best "pure photography" magazines in the world; camera gear is only occasionally mentioned, and when it is, only to support the "story" behind the visual narrative; there are also no ads -ever- except those for Lenswork itself), it is a double pleasure for me this go around since my "Icelandic Abstracts" appears in the same issue as a portfolio by Sean Kernan. 

Although I do not know Kernan, I have long admired his talents as a photographer. And, devotees of my blog all know of my fascination with Jorge Luis Borges. The fact that Kernan's and my portfolio appear side-by-side in this month's Lenswork is therefore (from my perspective, at least) a quintessentially Borgesian twist of fate: Kernan's book of photographs accompanying Borges' tales - The Secret Books (published in 1999 and long out of print, it is unfortunately prohibitively expensive if/when found) - is among my most cherished literary/photography possessions! I'd like to think that (again, purely from my perspective, certainly not Kernan's) some otherworldly incorporeal incarnation of Borges just gave me a Borgesian wink 😉

Morning Fog

"Space and silence are two
aspects of the same thing.
The same no-thing. They
are externalization of inner
space and inner silence,
which is stillness: the
the infinitely creative womb
 of all existence."

- Eckhart Tolle (1948 - )

Yesterday was one of those special mornings that makes photography ... heck, life! 😊 ... so wondrously special.  Anticipating a long weekend "work" day (a long technical paper I need to start writing but that I've been putting off for days), I had wanted to get a bit of extra sleep before I got started. My wife, who is well attuned to my photographer's soul - and predilections - all-too-well, woke me up early saying, "Hon, there is "heavy fog" outside, maybe you'd...?" .... I was out the door before she finished her sentence. I was so entranced by what I found at the nearby lake I raced to - a dense fog that was gently caressing the water and surrounding woods, a preternatural stillness in the air, and not another person in sight - that, initially at least, all I could do was just stand by the lakeshore, not doing - or thinking about - anything, cradling my camera with a smile on my face, soaking in the precious Zen moment. The photographs I captured in the hour or so that followed (some are shown here) are perhaps nothing special. But, "My, Oh My!" what perfect Alfred-Stieglitzian "equivalents" they all are of what I felt during my early morning sojourn around the lake that morning!

Perception of Autumn Color

"Every perception of color is an illusion,
we do not see colors as they really are.
In our perception they alter one another. "

- Joseph Albers (1888 - 1976)

Among the countless "rules" (or, more precisely, "rules of thumb") of photography, there are these three gems: (1) just because some "thing" or "place" is beautiful does not mean that it can be captured in a photograph; (2) how "good" a photograph is (whether judged by the photographer or viewer) has little or no correlation with how "hard" it was to get it; and - my personal favorite (and main focus of this short blog post; although all three apply) - (3) capturing "autumn colors" is among the hardest "simplest" things to do as a photographer. 

I admit that #3 may not be at the top of most photographer's list of "rules to learn to forget" - I mean, how hard can it be to take a picture of fall colors?!? Point and shoot, right? - but it is near the top of mine! Indeed, combining #3 with #1, I have always simultaneously both looked forward to and dreaded the "peak color" weeks of autumn. I, like most everyone else, find autumn colors (particularly those in my northern Virginia neighborhood) stunningly beautiful. Yet, I have also always found it particularly difficult to capture the beauty of fall colors with my camera. Taking it "all in" with a panorama certainly makes a colorful photo, but is hardly a step beyond the "cliche" shot. On the other hand, while artfully focusing in on a colorful tree or leaf might result in a credible "fine art" print, this is also just as likely to fall far short of expressing the "Wow!" one feels while entranced by the preternatural sun strewn colors of autumn. In my 50+ years of doing photography, I have yet to take a single image that comes close to capturing what I feel when I am surrounded by autumn colors at their best.

And so, we come to aphorism #2, and use it to contextualize the image that appears at the top of this post. This photograph was taken during a hike my wife and I took last weekend at a local park. The small but beautiful - and easily accessible - Scott Runs waterfall appears at the end of the first leg of the trail, and is visible to your left just as you turn toward the Potomac river. Indeed, most pictures of the waterfall are of this "head on" view of the falls from a vantage point near where the trail runs into the river. While I have an obligatory image captured from this position ...

... it is the image shown at the top of this post that I prefer. Why? Not because it is the better of the two (truth be told, I think this one is the superior photograph!); but simply because it required great effort on my part - with considerable help by my wife (without whom I literally could not have captured this image). To get this shot, I needed to first walk "around" a rock/sand embankment (and away from the falls), climb over some steep rocks, wade in slightly-above-knee water, climb back onto the steep rocks (while reaching over them to grab my camera and tripod that my wife was diligently holding for me), and find a position that approximated my "visualized" vantage point. In my mind, at least, and solely because of first-hand experience with the effort that was involved, I imbue the resulting image (the one that appears at the top of this page) with something "special"; for me, it is a "better image" because of what I needed to do beyond "just turning a corner and pressing the shutter." In truth? It's a toss up; whichever of the two images is "best" is - and ought to be - entirely up to the viewer. Sadly, of course, and as always, neither image captures the awe I felt as I was bedazzled by Virginia's autumn colors!

Capturing Surrealities - #2

"Far away there in the sunshine
are my highest aspirations.
I may not reach them, but I can 
look up and see their beauty,
believe in them, and try
to follow where they lead."

- Louisa May Alcott (1832 - 1888 )

This is a second batch of "surrealities," captured using my iPhone during a recent trip to Niagara, CA. Each is an example of the myriad photographic possibilities that almost always present themselves merely by looking up (or down) 😊... The "truth" revealed: the left and right images are lights on the ceiling of two restaurants we ate at, while the center image is the ceiling just outside the second floor entrance to the Table Rock Market, which overlooks the Canadian side of the falls.

Capturing Surrealities - #1

"Unlike other media, a photograph is always based on a real, material origin. Rather than looking at this as a disadvantage, we should understand that this same fact makes photography the ultimate surreal medium – simply because photography, although based on reality, is very far from the truth."

- Sergio Muscat – Abstract Photography/YouTube

While still on the subject of my wife's and my recent weekend trip to Niagara, CA (see posts 1, 2, and 3) - I am working on a few more images I will be sharing in the coming days - the triptych contains three "less than obvious" (surreal?) views of our trip as captured by my iPhone. The "truth" revealed, left to right: a plasma cylinder used to lure visitors into the House of Frankenstein ... a time exposure of a dynamic art display inside a wonderful Indian restaurant called The Dhaba On The Falls (I was given permission to take a shot while we waited for our food to arrive 😊... and an upside down view of some lights hanging on a wall by the luggage conveyor belt at the Buffalo the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. While these humble images may be a far cry from, say, epic Icelandic landscapes - and are probably not to everyone's tastes - I confess that these little surrealities provide me me no end of pleasure when I "discover" them in the wild. It is also worth remembering (by all photographers, from beginner to seasoned pro) that there are always compositional opportunities waiting to be seen and captured.

Impressions of Niagara Falls

"Dream delivers us to dream,
and there is no end to illusion.
Life is like a train of moods
like a string of beads, and, as
we pass through them, they prove 
to be many-colored lenses which
paint the world their own hue..."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

I mentioned in my last post that my wife and I took a short trip to Niagara Falls, Canada last weekend. I also mentioned that I was a bit underwhelmed by the falls themselves; as a photographer "seeing" the falls for the first time (the "tourist" in me was enthralled, and my iPhone has about a half dozen snaps to prove it). Rather than taking photographs of the "falls as they appear in their full splendor," I instead took a series of more intimate "impressions" of the falls. 

Apart from their sheer size - the height varies between 70 and 100 ft, the Canadian portion is close to 2,600 ft wide, while the U.S. side is a bit over 1,000 ft) - Niagara falls are cacophonous and effervescent; indeed, they are best described as a thunderously loud living liquid chaos! While the images that accompany this post may fall (small pun intended) far short of conveying just how thunderously loud and chaotic the falls are, they do provide a sense of what the falls offer photographers apart from their (otherwise grand) splendor. 

The Justification of Taking Pictures of "Rocks and Leaves"...

"The mystique of rock climbing is climbing; you get to the top of a rock glad it’s over but really wish it would go on forever. The justification of climbing is climbing, like the justification of poetry is writing; you don’t conquer anything except things in yourself…. The act of writing justifies poetry. Climbing is the same: recognizing that you are a flow. The purpose of the flow is to keep on flowing, not looking for a peak or utopia but staying in the flow. It is not a moving up but a continuous flowing; you move up to keep the flow going. There is no possible reason for climbing except the climbing itself; it is a self-communication."

- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934 - 2021)
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

From Iceland to Niagara Falls, Canada. While I still have an immense backlog of raw files from our recent Iceland trip (which I will post as soon as I find time to process them), I also have a few images I would like to share from a short trip my wife and I took to Niagara Falls, Canada this past weekend. The first set is the "quint-tych" you see above, which contains a modest sampling of the many rocks and boulders strewn along the trails at the Niagara Glen Nature Centre (about 10 min away from the center of town). For obvious reasons, this is a popular park for local bouldering enthusiasts. I enjoyed nearly 8 hours of restful hiking and composing with my travel camera (spread over two days: the first day with my wife, and the second day by myself while my wife was busy at a symposium). While I was a bit underwhelmed by the falls themselves (speaking purely as a photographer, not a tourist - I plan on posting an "impressionistic" image or two in the coming days), I was mesmerized by the rich store of "rocks and  leaves" compositional possibilities offered by the nearby nature center; to be sure, there was also plenty of "water" at the center, since the trails weave in and out of splendid views of the Niagara river (I will be posting a few of these as well in coming days). Following Mihaly's sage wisdom, my justification of taking pictures of "rocks and  leaves" (when, by all rights, I should have been back in our hotel room working on a technical paper that is soon due) is ... taking pictures of "rocks and  leaves"! 😊

A Shadow to Another Light

 "Beauty is not in the face;
beauty is a light in the heart.
...
True light is that which
radiates from within a man.
It reveals the secrets of the soul
to the soul and lets it rejoice in life,
singing in the name of the Spirit.
...
And when the shadow
fades and is no more,
the light that lingers becomes
a shadow to another light."

- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931) 

This shot was taken somewhere along the southern shore of the Snaefellsnes peninsula after only our first full day in Iceland. The scene magically - and quickly - unfolded as we were driving along Route 54. One moment, our car was surrounded by a drab, grey landscape too dark to make one want to even look; the next - and only for a brief instant - the heavens opened up to bathe the landscape with effulgent light! There was just enough time to park the car (although highway pull-over spots are regrettably few and far-between in Iceland - my single complaint about what is otherwise a photographer's true heaven - there was one that fortuitously appeared just as the light broke through the clouds), ask my wife to hand me my camera, and take a quick hand-held shot while still sitting behind the wheel with a running engine. In the time I took to reach for my tripod to head out for a "proper" composition, the light had vanished and the landscape reverted to its prior drab, grey landscape too dark to make one want to even look.

Apart from the majestic landscapes, moody seascapes, waterfalls, glaciers, lagoons, .... the list goes on and on ... perhaps Iceland's greatest gift to insatiably hungry photographers' eyes is the omnipresent drama and spectacle of its glorious light and shadow. Literally anywhere you choose to stand for more than a few brief moments (it does not matter where or even for what reason!) is certain to be the center of a veritable storehouse of every-shifting ethereal luminescent patterns of both radiance and mystery. While our planet is inarguably home to a number of places in which it is nearly impossible not to take a beautiful picture - my wife and I have visited our fair share (e.g., Hawaii, Santorini, and the Isle of Skye) - I have heretofore rarely experienced quite so many "places" ubiquitously scattered around a single country!

Silver Water Plummets

"Our land of lakes forever fair below blue mountain summits,
of swans, of salmon leaping where the silver water plummets,
of glaciers swelling broad and bare above earth’s fiery sinews—
the Lord pour out his largess there as long as earth continues!"

- Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807 - 1845)

A kind note about the waterfall I featured in my last post (from a photography friend, Paul Cotter, whose exquisite portfolio and blog should be on the short list of anyone reading this - check out my links page to see what I think of Paul's work!), enticed me to ponder how differently I view my own images, depending on whether they were "easy" or "hard" to get — sometimes very hard, as when I tried capturing a view of the Selvallafoss waterfall. While it is easily accessible from a parking lot on the northern part of route 56 (on the eastern/inland part of Iceland's Snaefellsnes peninsula), I suspect that many tourists just take a quick look around (the parking area provides a gorgeous view of the volcanic lake, Selvallavatn), and get right back into their cars, oblivious to the beautiful falls that are hidden from view. 

I found it "difficult" to get this particular shot not because I needed to do any strenuous hiking (while there is a short walk involved along a mud-strewn and partly inclined path, the falls are almost within a stone's throw from the parking lot), but because my son (Josh, the next generation photographer/artist in our family) and I struggled with the ambient elements: (1) bitingly hard pelting rain, and - as if that wasn't enough - (2) unrelenting fierce mini-hurricane-strength "sentient" wind (that mysteriously swirled around us, seemingly without direction, trying to find a way to keep us an unbalanced as possible). In short, this was a beastly hard shot to get! - certainly by comparison to the image in my last post.

So, what does this have to do with the kind note from Paul Cotter? My kneejerk reaction was, "Many thanks, but now I'm embarrassed!" - where my "embarrassment comes not from being unable to take a compliment, but from the fact that I know that the earlier photograph was ridiculously easy to get: park car, walk 1000 feet to a bridge overlooking falls, set up tripod with a wide angle lens, screw on a 3-stop neutral density filter, and click. That's it! How can I possibly take any real credit (or be "rewarded" with a compliment) beyond simply asserting, "Well, I was there, saw an incredible scene in front of me, and went click"?

Objectively, I know (or ought to know) that "how good an image is" - regardless of what measure of "goodness" one uses - is not correlated with, or defined by, how hard (the photographer remembers) it was to capture. One can just as easily stumble across a timelessly "good" image as work furiously for days, even weeks, to capture a meh-level photograph. Yet, instinctively, my knee-jerk reaction is still always the same; I feel "embarrassed" when complimented on (what I know was) an easy-to-get image 😳 ... which the image above was assuredly not!

River and Time

"Time flows like a river,

halting for no one.

There’s nothing in this world

that can outlast time itself.
...
Time's arrow is the loss
of fidelity in compression.
A sketch, not a photograph.
A memory is a re-creation,
precious because it is both
more and less than the original.
...
Every night, when you stand
outside and gaze upon the stars,
you are bathing in time as well as light.
...
Time devours all."

- Ken Liu (1976 - )

This is a view of Iceland's Bruarfoss Waterfall, located just off Route 37, about 90 miles east of Reykjavík. In the unlikely event that you do not know what is waiting for you as you take the short walk that leads to this waterfall from the parking lot, you are in for a wonderful surprise; it was an amazing experience to find yourself looking at this magnificent display of raw power and beauty as my family and I rounded one last turn on our foot path.

A Dizzying Trance Sublime and Strange

"The everlasting universe of things

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,

Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—

Now lending splendour, where from secret springs

The source of human thought its tribute brings

Of waters,—with a sound but half its own,

Such as a feeble brook will oft assume

In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,

Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,

Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river

Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

...
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion
Thou art the path of that unresting sound—
Dizzy Ravine! And when I gaze on thee
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange
To muse on my own separate fantast,
My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around;"

- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)
Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni

The word "dizzy," when used as a verb, means "to make giddy"; and giddy, in turn, is "an adjective that describes a feeling of dizziness or lightheadedness. It can also refer to a feeling of excitement or euphoria that causes a person to feel unsteady or unstable. Giddy can be used to describe physical sensations, emotional states, or even situations that are overwhelming or disorienting [ref]." It is with these nuanced interpretations that the words "dizzy" and "giddy" often popped into my mind during our trip to Iceland, which is filled with dizzying landscapes that evoke giddy awe. As some of my earlier images from our recent trip have already hinted, Iceland is replete with dissonant scales of time and space. Distant mountains are just as likely to appear as illusory nearby foothills, as nearby crags are to easily fool you into believing they are remotely distant. (Neither of which may even be true, as Borges might have once said in some other world.) Iceland's landscapes tend to induce trance-like states of "giddy anxiety" - unabashed awe, really - unless, and until, visitors somehow find a way to calibrate Iceland's a priori incommensurate scales of time and distance. 

The image above conveys a bit of this mysterious tension. Look at the picture but first use a finger to block out the small cluster of white buildings in the lower right. The remaining part of the image appears to be a "landscape" like any other, with a trace of a distant (but otherwise “normal”) mountain range. Now, remove your finger and let your eyes absorb the complete scene. Assuming your reaction is in any way like mine, you will experience a sense of "dizzying vertigo" as your brain's visual cortex tries desperately to make sense of the dissonant scales of size and distance; and leaves you grappling with the absurdity of the mountains having instantly grown tenfold in height! I lost count of the number of times I felt this way looking at Iceland's landscapes through my camera's viewfinder.

Fox-like Hedgehogian Photography

"We are what we are, and live in a given situation which has the characteristics – physical, psychological, social – that it has; what we think, feel, do is conditioned by it, including our capacity for conceiving possible alternatives, whether in the present or future or past. Our imagination and ability to calculate, our power of conceiving, let us say, what might have been, if the past had, in this or that particular, been otherwise, soon reaches its natural limits, limits created both by the weakness of our capacity for calculating alternatives – ‘might have beens’ – and even more by the fact that our thoughts, the terms in which they occur, the symbols themselves, are what they are, are themselves determined by the actual structure of our world. Our images and powers of conception are limited by the fact that our world possesses certain characteristics and not others: a world too different is (empirically) not conceivable at all; some minds are more imaginative than others, but all stop somewhere."

- Isaiah Berlin (1909 - 1997)
The Hedgehog and the Fox

Whenever I am on "vacation" - such as when my family and I recently visited Iceland - I instinctively recall Isaiah Berlin's well-known essay, "The Hedgehog and the Fox." The essay - a set of musings about Leo Tolstoy, history and human psychology - is woven around an aphorism attributed to Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Berlin divides the world into two different kinds of thinkers. Some, like Aristotle and Shakespeare, are pluralists - or "foxes" - and cast a wide net to get to know as many things as possible; others, like Plato and Dostoyevsky, are monists - or "hedgehogs" - and strive to know one thing as deeply as they can. 

So, what does this have to do with photography? Substitute "style (or manner) of composition" for "mode of thinking" to get an inkling of the admittedly imprecise analogy I will now leverage to illustrate the inevitable image-making process I seem to  follow during "family vacations." Soon after I arrive at a destination (but excluding the first few days, during which - as a rule - I seem utterly incapable of capturing anything more meaningful than instantly forgettable "touristy" snapshots of something that simply catches my eye), I am drawn exclusively to the "big picture," literally scanning the horizon for sweeping views and landscapes. In other words, I typically approach an "unknown land" like a fox, running from place to place, aware of my larger surroundings, but constantly sniffing, looking, anticipating other places to visit; never resting too long in any one spot. This initial stage of my creative process consists not just of having a loose penchant to search for "Wagnerian landscapes," but is indicative of a deeply entrenched - myopic - focus on "big picture" scenery during which I seem strangely incapable of even seeing anything else. Of course, and for obvious reasons, this "creative insight" is hardly surprising. Iceland's mountains, volcanoes, and glaciers all beckon - demand - your attention even before your plane lands!

But something interesting inevitably happens after a few days go by in a new place. I transform into a "fox-like" hedgehog. While I still scurry around from place to place like a fox (remember, these are vacations I am writing about, so there are usually plenty of sights to see 😊, my eye and camera become deeply drawn to smaller, quieter, vistas that speak more of universal moods and feelings than capturing documentarian-like images of "objects" in a given place. Concomitantly, my compositions transition from images that superficially depict obviously Icelandic scenery (i.e., images that explicitly encode and/or communicate the states-of-being of "multitudinous things" as my eyes saw them "out there" in Iceland), to photographs that implicitly communicate my own state-of-mind (i.e., images that reveal how "big picture" Icelandic vistas transform my inner "I"). 

Sometimes, rarely, I manage to do both, as in the diptych above. The left big-picture image "obviously" depicts uniquely Icelandic rocky forms (which may be easily confirmed by spending a few moments with Google maps), while the one on the right is at least plausibly Icelandic, given its volcanic appearance, but could have been captured anywhere as I scurried to-and-fro in fox-like fashion. Taken as a whole, the diptych also perfectly conveys my Zen state, as I was lost in, and mesmerized by, Iceland's gentle moods and rhythms. Notably (and not unexpectedly), after looking over my archive of raw files when we got back home, images like these did not emerge until I was into the second week of our trip.

Iceland's Immeasurable Boundlessness

"...time was slipping past, beating life out silently and with ever increasing speed; there is no time to halt even for a second, not even for a glance behind. 'Stop, stop,' one feels like crying, but then one sees it is useless. Everything goes by — men, the seasons, the clouds, and there is no use clinging to the stones, no use fighting it out on some rock in mid-stream; the tired fingers open, the arms fall back inertly and you are still dragged into the river, the river which seems to flow so slowly yet never stops.

...

Twenty-two months are a long time and a lot of things can happen in them- there is time for new families to be formed, for babies to be born and even begin to talk, for a great house to rise where once there was only a field, for a beautiful woman to grow old and no one desire her any more, for an illness- for a long illness- to ripen (yet men live on heedlessly), to consume the body slowly, to recede for short periods as if cured, to take hold again more deeply and drain away the last hopes; there is time for a man to die and be buried, for his son to be able to laugh again and in the evening take the girls down the avenues and past the cemetery gates without a thought. But it seemed as if Drogo’s existence had come to a halt. The same day, the same things, had repeated themselves hundreds of times without taking a step forward. The river of time flowed over the Fort, crumbled the walls, swept down dust and fragments of stone, wore away the stairs and the chain, but over Drogo it passed in vain- it had not yet succeeded in catching him, bearing him with it as it flowed."

- Dino Buzzati (1906 - 1972)
The Tartar Steppe

The passage above is taken from a novel of one of my favorite authors. Buzzati was trained as a journalist, but channeled his creative energies into creating a magical-realist-like (Kafkaesque, even Borgesian) surrealist world of fantasy just on the cusp of seeming "real." The Tartar Steppe is arguably his best known work. The "hero" of the story, Giovanni Drogo, is stationed at a fort in the desert that overlooks the vast Tartar steppe and told to await an invasion; one which, as we learn over the course of the novel, never actually comes. Among other things (e.g., a scathing rebuke of military life) it is a Camus-like Sisyphisian meditation on time, life, the specter of lost opportunities, and the perpetual - unquenchable - thirst for fulfilment. But, while all of these elements are fascinating on their own (and should prompt anyone with a penchant for Kafka and Borges who has not yet experienced Buzatti's writing to become acquainted with his work), I was reminded of another element of this allegorical tale while driving with my family around Iceland. Namely, its subtle depiction of the immeasurable boundlessness - the infinity - of space and and time. 

Iceland is a curiously dynamic blend of physical, aesthetic, and spiritual contrasts that never do more than only hint at some unfathomable underlying "reality." Iceland's vast stretches of land and sea can be used as backdrops to Drogo's endless wait for something to happen. Seemingly infinite blocks of solidified magma and melting glaciers are omnipresent on the horizon; approachable, in principle (by inquisitive souls willing to risk flat tires or broken axles - or both - while traversing the unpaved roads trying to get to them) but perpetually just-out-of-reach. Measures of time and distance both loose conventional - indeed, any - meaning. Just as the Apollo astronauts had difficulty judging how far rocks and mountains were from them on the moon (in the moon's case, because of the lack of an atmosphere), my family and I often struggled to estimate how "near" or "far" anything was; or how "long" or "short" a time it would take to get somewhere. In our case, this was due not to a lack of an atmosphere (the ever-churning transitions from clear skies to moody clouds to thick unrelenting globs of wind and rain to clear skies again were constant reminders of Iceland's dramatic weather; unlike in Buzatti's novel - in Iceland things emphatically do happen!), but simply to how alien Iceland's landscape is compared to our calibrated norms. Everything In Iceland seems to be simultaneously so close as give the illusion of intimacy, and yet so remotely far, so incomprehensibly and immeasurably distant, as to be unapproachable, at least within a single lifetime (or, at least, during a single trip 😊

Ice Mountains in Motion

"I’ve walked a lot in the mountains of Iceland.
And as you come to a new valley,
as you come to a new landscape,
you have a certain view.
If you stand still, the landscape doesn’t
necessarily tell you how big it is. It doesn't
really tell you what you’re looking at.
The moment you start to move
the mountain starts to move."

- Olafur Eliasson (1967 - )

On the advice of a local glacier guide that we met at the Skaftafell terminal before embarking on our "photo tour," my family and I took our car another 45 min east of the terminal to explore the Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon. For someone who has seen icebergs floating in ocean waters only two other times in his life (both times were in Alaska, and, even then, the icebergs presented themselves more as onesie and twosie "teasers" than sweeping panoramic clusters), Jokulsarlon is - and lives in - a world wholly its own. Icebergs, small and large, span one's view from wherever your feet happen to be planted on the shoreline to the vast ineffable infinity that defines Iceland's remote interior. A subtle but omnipresent hiss and crackle permeates the otherwise quiet air (save that for omnipresent chatter and soft shuffling of tourist's feet) as the ice breathes and slowly meanders about the lagoon. Occasionally, one hears a loud "pop" in the distance, followed by a splash as a chunk of ice falls into the water; or the whirring of engines powering the ubiquitous Zodiak boat tours. Photographically speaking, the glacier lagoon is an angst-filled delight. On the one hand, there are countless compositional opportunities that present themselves literally anywhere one looks; an obvious "delight." On the other hand, there is an accompanying and unsettling angst of knowing that it is simply impossible to do any sort of artistic justice to this breathtaking always-subtly-moving landscape of ice mountains in water; a lifetime would not suffice. While we didn't have a lifetime to spend at Jokulsarlon, we did take away a bit of the timeless awe of nature that this beautiful lagoon leaves all those who take the time to experience it. Thank you, Iceland 😊

The Edge of Heaven

 "I am the speeding spark of light
flung by God from the forge of Chaos.
I soar on wings swifter than wind
above the paths of the pulsing stars.
...

Suddenly, something comes swiftly toward me
through empty night — an image that speaks:
"Stay, oh traveler tired with flight!
Tell me, wanderer — what are you seeking?

My way leads on to the worlds you come from!

My flight is destined to those distant shores,

that far frontier and final reach

of created things: — the edge of heaven.

Cease your search, sojourner! end your
futile wandering through wastes of ether!

Know that ahead of you lie nothing

but infinite tracts of endlessness.
...

"Behind me, too, lie torrents of stars

and infinite, empty endlessness."

Oh eagle-mounting imagination!

Cease your soaring, descend to earth!

Oh swift voyager, venturesome poet:

tired of creating, cast your anchor here!"

- Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807 - 1845)
The Vastness of the Universe

This remarkable panorama - well, the actual Icelandic vista, if not my image, which hardly does justice to the preternatural play of shapes, light, and color! - was captured toward the end of our first full day of sightseeing as we were making out way back to our rental house along the southern shore of the Snaefellsnes peninsula. While Iceland certainly has its fair share of grey misty (and often heavily rain sodden) days, it is mostly - quintessentially - a mysterious amalgam of drab coolness and sensual warmth; a fractal superposition of black ("svartur") volcanic shades mixed with effervescent blues ("blár"), yellows ("gulur"), and orange ('Appelsínugulur") tones. And, as is true of all the world's best landscapes, the character and moods change far faster than one can possibly react (or hope to do justice) to with even the quickest "clicks" of the shutter. As I kept telling my wife throughout our trip and afterwards, it was a sincere privilege to call Iceland home during our two weeks there. Truly, we felt on the edge of heaven 😊

Frost-Pale Stillness

 "The primal sun with beams for its white hands
strikes cliffs and woods, an empty country's harp,
and conjures colored music from the bonds
of frost-pale stillness, plays a merry dance
on the glowing yellow, green, and red that light the
flowers and heather, on the mist-blue mountain cap,
on the scattered flocks of sheep in summer white,
fissures sprayed with black, the lava's grey expanse.

I drink your music's glory with thirsty eyes,
my cherished, longer-for land, and turn to you,
my nerves aflame with the same welcoming joy
as when you first rose to me from the seas.

I snuggle up in that motherly embrace
where I laughed as a child,
where I find joy and grace."

- Snorri Hjartarson (1906 - 1986)

The image above is the center-piece of my just-completed "Icelandic Abstracts" portfolio that consists of images captured during an exhilarating two-hour plane tour of the area surrounding the Skaftafell National Park area, which is home to some of Iceland‘s largest glaciers, most prolific volcanoes and richest river deltas. 

While I booked a "photographer's plane tour" covering the southern part of Iceland months in advance, I was also well aware of Iceland's notoriously finicky weather. Because of the popularity of such tours, I was told that - in the event of "bad weather" - my ticket would be refunded but a backup flight was unlikely to be offered. As luck would have it (at least at first), the weather during the morning hours of the day of the scheduled flight was awful. Visibility did not extend much farther than the hood of our car, and was certainly not good enough to allow a plane to take off; or, if the pilot was crazy enough to go ahead with the tour, to allow its passengers to see anything near the ground! However, a morning full of remorseful angst miraculously gave way to early afternoon bliss, as the clouds cleared (slightly but sufficiently) to provide two hours of photographic nirvana. Vacations and the vagaries of chance, indeed.

The images in this portfolio were created in a way diametrically opposite to how 95% of my portfolios emerge (meaning, the conditions were way out of my comfort zone): (1) rapid-fire "spraying" of shots (to get as many compositions in as possible in a very short time frame) vs. my usual "slow tempo" meditative approach; (2) slow-action oriented anticipation of "just the right framing with appropriate telephoto zoom" punctuated by quickly opening up to a wide angle view to help anticipate the next "frame" vs. my typically much more deliberate compositions centered on a narrow range of focal lengths; and (3) using (what for me are) very high ISOs (3200+) to achieve fast enough shutter times to minimize blurring vs. my normal "stick to base ISO" mantra. 

Add to all this the fact that while the captain of my small Cessna was kind enough to give me the run of the cabin - he allowed me to unbuckle my seatbelt and move at will from the right window to left to right again, over and over again - this otherwise laudable "artistic freedom," when coupled with the 60 deg swings of the aircraft from horizontal the captain deliberately - and routinely - engaged in so that I could get the "best views," took its inevitable toll: each image represents a delicate compromise between maximizing aesthetics and minimizing nausea! 

But, my-oh-my, what breathtaking images of its abstract frost-pale stillness Iceland had to offer this lucky photographer...thank you, Iceland!

Wonders and Mysteries of Iceland

"We say, 'Everything comes out of emptiness.'
One whole river or one whole mind is emptiness.
When we reach this understanding we
find the true meaning of our life.
When we reach this understanding we can
see the beauty of human life.
Before we realize this fact,
everything that we see is just delusion.
Sometimes we overestimate the beauty;
sometimes we underestimate or ignore
the beauty because our small mind
is not in accord with reality."

- Shunryu Suzuki (1904-1971)
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

It has been a bit over two months since my last post. My muse certainly knows it, having been unceremoniously ushered into a backroom devoid of anything remotely aesthetic. My far-far-from-photography "day job" responsibilities have drowned me in seemingly infinite oceans of equations, computer code, memos, reports, and technical briefings; as I longingly gaze at my camera and whisper promises to my muse. But life, and time, is ever cyclical, and all one really ever needs is patience. Well that, and the "light at the end of the tunnel," otherwise known as the third - and finally, successful! - attempt to go on a family trip to Iceland 😊 Our first try was in 2020 was quickly ixnayed by the pandemic. And our second try - last year - fell through because of a scheduling conflict (our youngest was starting his first year away at college). So, the third time proved to be the charm, albeit with an "added cost" of giving all of us (my wife, our kids, and myself) COVID during the last part of our two week trip. Indeed, as I write this, a week and half since coming home, my wife and I are both grudgingly accepting the onset of (a mild case?) of "long COVID." We can work for short stretches of an hour or two, but quickly succumb to a debilitating tiredness. Naps help, but the sad cycle just repeats itself. On the other hand, although we lost taste and smell at the tail end of the first week, recovery on that front was swift; taste and smell were both back within only a few days. I plan to blog about some of our adventures in Iceland in the coming days/weeks (as strength permits). 

The first image, shown above, is a view of the Skógafoss waterfall located in the southeastern part of Iceland. It is transcendently beautiful, and almost "too easy" to get to; one literally drives into a parking lot that is half-a-mile from the main road and walks about a 1000 feet or so (perhaps pausing briefly to ingest another delicious cup of Icelandic coffee along the way!). Unfortunately, there is a steep price to be paid for this ease-of-entry, at least for photographers who prefer "pristine" (i.e., people-less) compositions. Expect to wait a long - long - time for any chance to get such shots. People are omnipresent, day to night; and the tent park sandwiched between the parking lot and waterfall ensures that people are always milling about. But this is a minor inconsequential complaint. The rewards - and sincere privilege - of spending quality Zen time with this magnificent falls far outstrip whatever modicum of angst the presence of likeminded people may induce in a photographer's mind! 

Postscript - on the vagaries of chance and aesthetic disposition. It took me two days - two hours the first day, and an hour after sunrise on the second - to "wait out" the presence of other people near the falls. Of course, I could "clone" them away - as I sometimes do when patience is not an answer - but I much prefer the purity of a special moment. Contrast this with the experience of our eldest son, who is a self-avowed "non photographer," and who rarely takes a shot of anything with his iPhone (and, even then, mostly confines his interest to "animals" and small critters). He causally walks up to the Skógafoss waterfall, glances over his shoulder at his dad - who is undergoing his typical paroxysm of activity to set up his tripod in just the right place (and is no where close to attempting a bona fide composition) - fires off a quick but beautiful shot of the waterfall that is completely devoid of people, and nonchalantly walks back to the car to take a nap! True story. 

Worlds Within Worlds

"It was from them [spiders] that I first learned of the intelligence that lurks in nonhuman nature, the ability that an alien form of sentience has to echo one’s own, to instill a reverberation in oneself that temporarily shatters habitual ways of seeing and feeling, leaving one open to a world all alive, awake, and aware. It was from such small beings that my senses first learned of the countless worlds within worlds that spin in the depths of this world that we commonly inhabit."

- David Abram (1957 - )
The Spell of the Sensuous

Postscript. The quote is from a remarkable book that has nourished my soul since I first read it in the mid 1990s (whose author, by coincidence, attended the same university as I did - Stony Brook, NY; I suspect we walked past each other a few times during our overlapping time there, though we graduated with very different degrees). It is part of a longer section in which Abrams describes an awe-inspiring encounter with a spider. Though spiders have no direct connection to the triptych above (which, for those of you wondering, is "just" a sequence of crepes that my wife prepared for our breakfast this morning), I had only last night started my 10th or 11th re-reading of Abrams' book, and had - by coincidence? - earmarked the page on which that wonderful combination of words "...worlds within worlds..." appears (page 19). Of course, while I almost certainly would have captured the same images whether or not I had been rereading Abrams' book the night before (since my eye is naturally tuned to seeing "ordinary-yet-not-ordinary" abstract patterns, I was instantly drawn to the crepes' tapestry of web-like forms), the serendipitous indirect enfolding of crepes and spiders brought an added joy to this morning's breakfast 🙂

Serendipitous Geometry

"The artist is a collector of things imaginary or real. He accumulates things with the same enthusiasm that a little boy stuffs his pockets. The scrap heap and the museum are embraced with equal curiosity. He takes snapshots, makes notes and records impressions on tablecloths or newspapers, on backs of envelopes or matchbooks. Why one thing and not another is part of the mystery, but he is omnivorous."

- Paul Rand (1914 - 1996)
Paul Rand: A Designer's Art

Postscript. It has been said that the lifeblood of photography is serendipity. While none of the images that make up the triptych above are particularly praiseworthy (beyond, I hope, simply being "interesting" to look at for a a few seconds), the fact that they exist at all is serendipitous. As seems to happen so often, what I planned to photograph and what I found myself photographing this past Sunday are unrelated except that the latter followed naturally - if unpredictably - from the former. Waking up to see a completely overcast sky I rushed to the kitchen to pour a bit of coffee into my commuter cup and took off in my car to go to one of my favorite "cloudy day" parks (Great Falls park in northern VA), about an hour from home. The closer I got to the park, the more "blue sky" was elbowing the clouds away, until, finally, literally as I arrived, the sky had become crystal clear and a strong sun was beating down overhead; far from the quiet diffused light I expected and was rushing over to compose in. Nothing to do but turn around and head back home. Which is what I did, but not before listening to my muse and stopping by the parking lot my wife and I leave our car at when we go to the farmer's market held nearby on Saturdays. Since it was Sunday, the parking lot was deserted, and I had plenty of time to commiserate over a failed trip to Great Falls, rekindle the quiet joy of just being "mindfully in the moment," and rediscover the simple pleasure of looking for "geometric designs" with my camera. As I said, nothing spectacular or noteworthy, and a far cry from what I originally planned to do, but a thoroughly delightful outing nonetheless 😊

Connecting With the Ineffable

"Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable.
Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself,
and see if we may not eff it after all.”

- Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)

For dedicated readers of my blog, this entry will appear a bit out of the norm. For one thing it does not include any photographs taken by me; for another, I'm quoting an "Adams," but not one whose first name is Ansel. The diptych you see above contains two of my dad's acrylic paintings he completed in the spring of 2001, which (immediately after completing them) he called Premonition 1 and 2, respectively. And, as he commonly did with "new" work, he displayed them on my parents' living room's main wall; where they unceremoniously hung through 9/11. Today, Sep 11, 2021, marks the 20th anniversary of that day, one that is simultaneously best forgotten and never forgotten. Unlike the families of the 2977 people who were killed that day (including 2606 at the World Trade Center), my family did not suffer the pain of losing any loved ones in that tragedy; though we believed for a time that my mom, who was 70 years old in 2001 and worked on the 91st floor of the second tower, was, using a favorite turn of phrase of hers, "a goner." Somehow, miraculously, she survived (you can read a bit of her story in the New Yorker Magazine - just search the page for "Ilachinski"), and eventually died almost exactly 16 years later, on Sep 9, 2017. Like so many other "survivors," my mom suffered gravely from "survivors guilt," anguishing to her last days over why she, an "old timer" (her words) lived when so many young people did not. My dad, who was at home in bed at their home on Long Island as events unfolded (and only a few months away from passing away from cancer a few months later) was too weak and riddled with pain-killers to know or assimilate much of what happened that day. After my mom finally made it back to their home close to midnight, she was startled - shocked is a better word (if I remember how my mom characterized it) - by "seeing" my dad's theretofore innocently but provocatively named "Premonitions" - still hanging quietly on their living room wall - transfigured into truly prophetic - albeit unrecognized - warnings; which is at least how my parents now interpreted them. For me, all these years later, these paintings are touchstone reminders of the mysterious rhythms and patterns that make up our universe; echoes of even deeper connections that special souls (such as my dad the artist) are sometimes able to forge with the ineffable. As memories of 9/11 flood my mind on this anniversary, I find solace in the art my dad bequeathed me (even these two "Premonitions"; you can see more of his work here), and the memory of so many happy years I still had to share with my mom. My prayers go out to those who were not so lucky.