Skye: Grandeur of Quiraing

"When I consider the multitude of associated forces which are diffused through nature — when I think of that calm balancing of their energies which enables those most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world's creatures and economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the wants of creation, I rise from the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence, and grandeur, beyond our language to express, of the Great Disposer of us all."

- Michael Faraday
(1791 - 1867)

Postscript: this shot was taken not too far from the parking area for The Quiraing on the Isle-of-Skye's Trotternish peninsula’s east coast. It is a spectacularly vibrant symphony of majestic - and labyrinthian - cliffs and grassy valleys. It is also arguably the largest landslide on earth.

Skye: Eternal Delight

"In this moment there is nothing which comes to be.  In this moment there is nothing which ceases to be. Thus there is no birth-and-death to be brought to an end. Wherefore the absolute tranquility is this present moment.  Though it is at this moment, there is no limit to this moment, and herein is eternal delight."

- Hui-neng (638—713)

Quoted from Alan Watts, In my Own Way

Postscript: this shot was taken near Armadale castle (on the Isle-of-Skye, Scotland), looking out across the Sound of Sleat toward Mallaig (Jon Schueler's initial stay on Skye, as mentioned in an earlier post).

Skye: Suffused with Wonder II

"...reason has tended to collar intellect in our time... For reason knows that we all want to have reason on our side. But once we have seen reason plain, we can use it as the wonderful tool that it is, and then get on with the real business of being alive along the way whose milestones are momentary or timeless experiences of being whole - mind, body, and hand - in the delight that is memorable and breathe an immemorial air...

...And then you become aware of your self there, aware of rare self, the rare self that interpenetrates all, sees and knows with a final certainty. I know some such self has been splelt with a capital S, just as the word certainly has been called Truth or Reality. But I Don't want in this practical exercise to use capitals, or words like Mysticism, Transcendence, and so on. There is no need; only a little application, persistence, failure and more persistence. The way is open. But one must go along it far enough for thought to get blocked and the void of no-thought to open out, for only then can enlightenment come."

- Neil M Gunn (1891-1973)

Atom of Delight

Postscript: astute readers of my blog will have noticed that I have recently (since my return from Skye, Scotland in July) quoted heavily from Neil Gunn. For those of you who have not heard the name (I had not heard of him prior to my first trip to Scotland in 2009, where I "discovered" his writings while browsing through one of Scotland's many fine second-hand bookstores), Neil Miller Gunn was born in 1891 in Dunbeath, a small fishing and crofting community in Caithness, in North East Scotland. Arguably among the most important Scottish novelists of the first half of the 20th century (he wrote 20 novels between 1926 and 1954), Gunn's unique gift was the seemingly effortless manner in which he captured in prose the - physical and spiritual - essence of Highland life. His final book, published in 1956 was The Atom of Delight (from which the passage above is quoted, along with a few others in earlier blog entries). It is a profoundly moving, deeply spiritual autobiography that traces his interest in Zen Buddhism (his interest in which was ignited when he read Herrigel's Zen and the Art of Archery, the same book that, coincidentally, also jump-started Henri Cartier-Bresson's pursuit of the "decisive moment'). I find his writings a perfect complement to (and/or, prose-based analogue of) the feeling that Scotland, in general, and Skye in particular, instills in me.

Skye's Evanescent Moods

"The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all. I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water."

- Eugene Ionesco

(1909 - 1994)

Sometimes the most revealing shots of all - that record otherwise invisible rhythms of light and mood - are the simplest, requiring the least effort. As I've already written about in previous blog entries, Skye's one constant is its evanescence. One minute, one is enveloped in a cool mist, or is pummeled hard by cold rain; a minute passes, and rays of bright sun light up a valley that was all but invisible an instant ago; another minute passes, and the clouds magically transform into a symphony of light and shadow and - inexplicably - wondrous color that seems to simultaneously come from nowhere and infuse everything (the act that so transfixed and inspired the abstract artist Jon Schueler); then, suddenly, a mysterious, imperceptibly soft, wind, stirs away the magic, and renders Skye's secrets invisible once more, leaving only the soft "moooos" and "baaaahs" of the omnipresent cows and sheep in place to remind one that Skye's evanescence is fundamentally defined by an endless - irreducibly complex - play between the real and the surreal; with neither giving up its secrets easily.

The image at the top of this blog entry contains a short sequence of the same photograph, captured from the same spot (my position at our breakfast table, with me looking at our cottage's south facing window) and at the same time, but on different days during our stay. While not a fine-art masterpiece - it is nothing more than a quick "pick up the camera, steady the view, click, and go back to munching on the bagel" shot - the sequence provides an unadorned glimpse of Skye's alluring shifting moods and light. The specific images do not matter, as does not matter the order, nor the fact that the images were all taken on different days. I could have conveyed essentially the same meaning by capturing arbitrary images throughout any relatively short interval of time on any given day. Skye's "reality" cannot be captured by focusing on the details of how its moods and light change, but only by appreciating the constancy of change. On the other hand, Skye's "surreality" cannot be captured by a camera at all, and is best simply experienced. 

And that, perhaps, is Skye's second deepest lesson and mystery (the first mystery was mentioned in an earlier post: how - despite the incessant drama of Skye's landscapes, and unending froth of light and shadow - Skye nonetheless manages to impart a spiritually infused fantastical sense of quiet): while photography can be a powerful tool for self-discovery, its utility for this process can - paradoxically - sometimes be at odds with a photographer's ability to "discover" external truths. The ability to do the former precludes, to a degree, the ability to simultaneously to do the latter (echoes of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle?) For me, this certainly appears to be the case on Skye, where I can either: (A) capture certain aspects of Skye's shifting "lights and moods" with my camera (in a "fine art" / documentary manner, that focuses attention on the specifics of Skye's shifting "lights and moods" but ignores - because my camera's digital sensor cannot capture - deeper spiritual dimensions), or, (B) explore and become increasingly aware of richer levels of aesthetic and spiritual understanding by directly experiencing Skye's shifting "lights and moods (sans camera). But I cannot do - Skye does not permit one to do - both simultaneously.

On the other hand, I may be over-complicating matters, as is my penchant to do, for as Lao Tzu reminds us, "The Way to do is to be." Ultimately, whatever distinctions may or may not exist between "doing A" and "doing B" are mine, and mine alone. I can experience Skye, I can capture (aspects of) Skye with my camera, I can be on Skye, but these seemingly disparate acts are all just "me being me" on Skye. Skye itself remains blissfully evanescent and eternally ineffable. And that is why I can't wait to go back to "me being me" on Skye.

"Drive-by shooting" in Skye

"Who forces time is pushed back by time;

who yields to time finds time on his side."

-  The Talmud

What is a "fine art" photographer (meaning: a photographer whose bills are paid by activity not directly related to photography) to do when, faced with extraordinary visual/compositional opportunities, but only relatively short bursts of photography are allowed? Or, to ask the question more directly, how does one balance a family vacation (with two teenaged boys in tow) with fine-art photography?

The truth is that the "constraint" I have just alluded to (of having only short bursts of photography) is mostly illusory. Certainly, in my case - and I've been taking photographs for well over 40 years at this point - the truth is that I take photographs whenever and wherever I can for as long (or short) a time as I can get. A few minutes here, a few hours there; and on rare occasions, day-long dedicated safaris (such as when I took a full day off work to have Luray Caverns all to myself). This has been my method for as long as I can remember. Whether I'm on my own, prowling around with my camera at a nearby park on a lazy Sunday, hiking around with my younger son (who is an SX-70 photographer), or on vacation with the entire family at some remote part of the planet, my process of doing photography is essentially the same. It is opportunistic and quick (well, "quick" in photographer's parlance, meaning - objectively - anywhere from a few moments to a few hours, as recorded by non-photographer-observers), and is seldom, if ever, shaped by specific "goals." I capture what captures me, so to speak. 

The overarching meta problem on Skye was that I was captured by everything! Skye's breathtaking beauty made it virtually impossible to look away, and not take pictures; impossible to just slow down and wait for the picture to reveal itself (my preferred method). Our stay in Skye can be best described as a continual struggle to maintain a balance between capturing Skye's Wagnerian-scale landscapes that the eye is inevitably first drawn to - particularly in a place seldom frequented and that has such dramatic mountainous forms and displays of light and shadow to offer - and yielding attention to the quieter, more intimate - often only subtly visible - elements of those same landscapes. Time was hardly ever sufficient to do real justice to the second - and as far as fine-art photography is concerned - most important class of images (if something beyond simple "postcard" impressions of a place is being sought). As my dad taught me throughout his life as an artist, one cannot hope to find (and reveal, whether by traditional means using  a canvas, in his case, or via photography, in mine) anything of lasting value in nature if one is not on the most intimate terms with her. Whenever my dad would encounter a meadow or forest or one of his beloved "болото" (Russian for "swamp"), he would spend hours, often entire days, just wandering around, hands clasped behind his back, and easel, paintbrushes and canvas quietly tucked away in the trunk of his car. This was his "getting to know a place" meditation time; his dialectic with an - as yet - unknown/uninternalized environment. Only when my dad gained a sense of unity with - of a belonging to - a place, a Goethian-holistic "feel" of the dynamics in play around him (and an implied - soulful - invitation for him to engage with the dynamics of a landscape), did he finally set up his easel and start to paint.

Of course, the ability to engage in these dialectic meditations is not always possible. On Skye, "drive-by shooting" was the norm: while cruising along some one-lane road (there is a detailed etiquette on dealing with approaching traffic on one-lane roads in Scotland), just "enjoying the sights," I'd suddenly exclaim something like, "Whoa, the light! We've got to stop!" My ever patient wife (who did all of the driving) would just as suddenly screech to a halt at the first available side of gravel, and - jumping out of the car with camera and tripod already in hand (an instinct honed and nurtured over years of practice) - I'd proceed to look, look again, run towards some spot my visual cortex deemed "best" (as I automatically extend the legs of my tripod), set up my camera, rifle off a few shots, and run back to the car with a thanks to my wife (and an apology to the kids, who would invariably still be rolling their eyes in the backseat at the temerity of "yet another stop for dad"). Run the clock another 20 or so minutes and repeat.

Though this "process of doing photography" may appear either silly or unrewarding (or both), in truth, with only minor variations (the major ones being that, when not traveling, I'm usually the one both driving and stopping and the kids are back home playing their video games), it is how most of my photographs are captured. To be sure, there are times when I do have the luxury of time to "get to know a place" before training my lens on it. But more often than not - for what I consider my "best" images - I "get to know a place" not by wandering around for a few days without a camera, as my dad once did without his brushes; rather, by repeated visits, accumulated over a long time, months, years even, enabled simply by virtue of living close enough to a place of interest to be able to do so. And it is the wisdom (if I can call it that) that these repeated visitations to local places has instilled in me that - when traveling abroad, with far less precious "getting to know a place" time available - I rely on to instinctively guide my eye to parts of an otherwise unknown environment most prone to harboring "quiet secrets." I am not always right, and I certainly prefer to discover these secrets in a more deliberate, circumspect way. But 40+ years of keeping my eyes and soul receptive to nature's gifts goes a long way; or so I keep telling myself as I rocket out of the car with my tripod and camera, and run toward what I'm sure is another "special, quiet place."

Scotland, Skye, and Schueler

"I wasn't sure if it was a place or a mood or what it was, but there was something I was looking for .... As I approached the sea near Mallaig and the Sound of Sleat I could see these massive forms like the Isle of Eigg and the southern tip of Skye and Rhum, and I could see these things sort of glowering in this kind of wild light that took place that day and the Geiger counter just went berserk. I'll never forget the excitement."

- Jon Schueler (1916 - 1992)

The Sound of Sleat: A Painter's Life

Those were words written down by abstract artist Jon Schueler after arriving in the remote fishing village of Mallaig in western Scotland in 1957, overlooking the Sound of Sleat and toward the isle of Skye. Except for the time and specific place (in my case, in 2009 during my wife's and my first trip to Kyleakin, Skye, and, more recently, last month, as our whole family arrived in tow to Trumpan, Skye - the northern part of Skye's "second finger" - including our two teenage boys), I could use Schueler's words to describe my own reaction to the preternatural splendor of Skye's landscapes and skies. It is a wondrous place that somehow exists both inside and outside of time; where shapes, textures, and colors appear, and disappear, fleetingly and constantly, that one swears have never before appeared anywhere else on earth; where so much Wagnerian-scale drama unfolds in its undulating land, sea, and cloudscapes during even that ephemeral instant between involuntary blinks of an eye, that one's aesthetic senses are delighted and overwhelmed. Oh, but what a magnificent symphony!

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting images as I "develop" them, and that I somehow (inexplicably) managed to capture in between slack-jawed exclamations of "Ooh!" and "Ahhh" and the occasional, "Just extraordinary!"; as Skye sporadically allowed hints of its ineffable mystery and beauty to enter my camera's lens and viewfinder.

Again, I cannot improve upon Shueler's own words:

"When I speak of nature, I speak of the sky, because the sky has become all of nature to me. And when I think of the sky, I think of the Scottish sky over Mallaig. It isn't that I think of it that nationally, really, but that I studied the Mallaig sky so intently, and I found its convulsive movement and change and drama such a concentration of activity that it became all skies and even the idea of all nature to me. It's as if one could see from day to day the drama of all skies and of all nature in all times speeded up and compressed. I knew that the whole thing was there. Time was there and motion was there - lands forming, seas disappearing, worlds fragmenting, colors emerging or giving birth to burning shapes, mountain snows showing emerald green; or paused solid still when gales stopped suddenly and the skies were clear again after long days of howling sound and rain or snow beating horizontal from the sky."

Perhaps Skye's deepest mystery, is how - despite the incessant drama of all of its basic forms, and unending froth of light and shadow - there is a deep, deep, spiritually infused fantastical quiet that envelops the senses (when the moment is right and Skye has chosen to briefly reveal that side of herself).

Why the heck is he taking a picture of that?

A while back, I blogged about a series of images I call "Photographing the Photographer" diptychs (or PPDs), consisting of two side-by-side images: one image - taken by my wife - is of yours truly happily snapping away with my camera, oblivious to everything except what is in front of the tripod; the other, is of the "final print" of whatever it was that caught my attention at that instant. While the dissonance between the "final print" and the - sometimes bizarre - postures I assume while setting up a shot (and/or puzzling places in which I set up my tripod to begin with!) was not as great as in past adventures (e.g., look here and here), my wife managed to catch me "in the act" during three shots I took during our recent trip out west (see previous blog entries). Of course, each has its own story.

In the diptych at top, I recall both our boys (Noah, 13, and Josh, 9) circling around, curious about what caught my eye. "Is there a bird?", Noah asked. "A frog?" inquired Josh. "Just a log, guys," I answered. They gingerly walked up to the nondescript log by the water, giggled, and with an obligatory, "Dad, you are so weird!" went back to frolicking about the lakeshore (we were standing at the northern end of Yellowstone lake). In truth, it was more the light, and the play between the light, grass, and contrast between the log and grass that caught my eye, but my hunch is that a fuller "explanation" would have induced more giggling. 

In this shot, I stood locked in my hunched position (for which my back repaid me later by locking up completely at night) for 30-45 min, moving ever so slightly left-right / up-down trying a number of subtlety different compositions. My kids (along for a family hike at Bear Lake, CO) did not even bother to stop to inquire, though I caught a "Yep, at it again" as they made their way up the trail. I did get a few quizzical looks from passerbys, one commenting to another (a bit too loudly I thought), "Why the heck is he taking a picture of that?" This abstract root-contusion is among my favorite shots of the whole trip!

This final diptych finds me hunched over a a shot of Yellowstone's Lower Falls. In contrast to the earlier images, in which I "slaved" over myriad attempts to find a pleasing composition, I took but one shot here (worth keeping), but had to stay glued to my spot for what seemed like an eternity because of the swarm of visitors, a few of whom - sad to say - were less than polite. I was stomped on, pinched, shoved, yelled at (true!), had my tripod yanked (twice!), and even had to do a quick duck and cover to save my camera as a burping baby got a bit too close for comfort with recent-meal-induced projectiles. Though I needed no more than 10 sec to compose and click, it took 10-15 minutes (!) to find a stretch of uninterrupted time into which I could fit those precious 10 sec! As I got my shot, and turned to leave, I found my wife quietly and contentedly standing behind me, having gotten her shot of me almost immediately after I set up my tripod. Smiling (and in mock resignation), she simply asked: "Just how long does it take you to get a simple shot?"

Postscript. I was "yelled" at for having the gall to wear a NY Yankees hat in Wyoming... what insolence! ;-)

The Same and Not the Same

"Wholes and not wholes; brought together, pulled apart; sung in unison, sung in conflict; from all things one and from one all things...As the same things in us are living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and those in turn having changed around are these...Into the same rivers we step and do not step, we are and are not." - Heraclitus

When my parents, my dad's parents, and I visited Yellowstone's Old Faithful geyser in 1970, I remember it as an unassuming "mound" with steam coming out (before the awe I felt upon witnessing its eruption for the first time as a 10yo!), nestled slightly beyond a small walkway from Yellowstone's famous old faithful inn (built in 1904). There were no main thoroughfares, no parking lots (save that for a relatively small one near the inn), no boardwalks. We parked our car right by the geyser, walked out to Old Faithful, waited about 20 minutes or so for it to erupt (it was a bit more regular than it is now, thanks to myriad small earthquakes over the intervening years that have affected subterranean water levels), and were on our way. My, how times have changed! Or have they...?

Nowadays, the area around Old Faithful resembles more a small town - with a major parkway leading into it, several huge parking areas, lodging, shopping, a nature center, and more boardwalks than Coney Island and Atlantic City combined (or so it seemed) - than some "not easy to be discovered" marvel of nature. One could be forgiven for missing the geyser entirely, given the voluminous activity swarming all around it, passerbys appearing more interested in licking ice-cream cones and texting their friends back home about how "great Yellowstone is" than waiting for Yellowstone's patient sentinel to burp its superheated water for a few minutes. More than once did I hear a child ask her parents, "Where is the geyser, mommy?" while standing almost directly in front of it!

While it is easy to lament the "loss of innocence" (I lamented a different, more personal, loss in my last blog entry) associated with the development of any natural park designed for public consumption (the deepest personal lament of this kind may arguably be ascribed to Ansel Adams, who - in revealing the stupendous beauty of Yosemite Valley to the public - also rendered it forever impossible to experience as an isolated wilderness, I will not dwell on this aspect of our experience of Yellowstone; instead, I will muse on what I found at Old Faithful in more general terms of what it says about the impermanence - and permanence - of reality.

On the crudest level, Old Faithful remains "Old Faithful"; i.e., it is a geyser (located about 17 miles west of West Thumb Basin) with a more-or-less regular eruption schedule (about 65 minutes in 1940 to 90 +/- 10 minutes today). The dynamics of its eruptions has remained the same, even as the individual molecules of water continually change from eruption to eruption. But as I've just described, the visitor's experience of Old Faithful is dramatically different from what it once was (and was for me in 1970). Where, in decades past, one could view the geyser in relative isolation (if one so chose) - a communion, of sorts, between civilization and pristine nature - such a communion is now all-but-impossible, as Old Faithful must compete with impatient swarms of jostling and always-chattering bodies, not-so-distant belches of diesel-powered RVs and trucks, and an occasional screech of tires as cars and buses attempt to avoid wandering hordes of tourists lost -or soon to be - in vast parking lots. Meditation helps, of course, to refocus the mind on the Old Faithful; and, truth be told, the sheer wonder and delight of seeing a massive 150+ foot column of super-heated steam and water suddenly erupt from a hole in the ground never gets old. The child-like state of innocence I wrote about in my previous post was, during this trip, perhaps easiest to realize at Old Faithful, where one cannot help but stand slack-jawed in awe of nature's magic. My experience of the erupting geyser - sans surrounding noise and clicking cameras - was essentially what I remember it being 42 years ago.

But, in the end, what do we really mean by "Old Faithful"? Is it the geyser? the geyser erupting? the water underneath the geyser? the surrounding area? the "experience" of watching "it" erupt? the tourist-driven infrastructure that envelopes "it" (and all surrounding geysers)? What has remained the same, and what has really changed? Labels, labels, and more arbitrary labels, all pointing to "something," and yet none describing anything of lasting meaning or value. 

And so, how fitting it is that an old "faithful" wonder - the same and yet not the same as it once was - sagely reminds this self-professed observer of wonders of the folly of wondering about the labels of things. "Old Faithful" is as an imprecise, imperfect label of a "geyser" in Yellowstone as "Andy" is an essentially vacuous label of a "photographer on an RV trip to Yellowstone with his family." Impermanence bleeds from words and arbitrary attachments; and permanence is but an impermanent illusion. All things are the same and not the same. And Old Faithful is no "thing."

"We are like the spider.

We weave our life

and then move along in it.

We are like the dreamer who dreams

and then lives in the dream.

This is true for

the entire universe." 

- Upanishads

Numinous Self-Actualization

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization. This term ... refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming." - Abraham Maslow (1908 - 1970)

Forty two years ago (and, in view of the commentary to follow, a faint echo of Adams' answer to life, universe, and everything), my family and I took a trip out west that I have never forgotten. My 'family' back then was made up of my parents and both grandparents on my dad's side. I have never forgotten that trip for two reasons: (1) it was the last trip that all of us were together on (my grandparents were - in 1970 - well into their 80s and it was upon our return to 'home' that year - on Long Island, NY - that health issues that would eventually take both their lives first appeared); and (2) it was the first time my 10 year old self was exposed - and spiritually awakened to - the extraordinary aesthetic riches that mother Earth offers.

Now fast-forward to the present; more precisely, to 10-25 August, during which time my family and I (including my wife, our two sons and my mom, who just happens to be the same age as my grandfather was in 1970) flew out to Denver, CO to rent a 32-ft RV and used it to explore the Rocky Mountain, Grand Teton, and Yellowstone national parks. (This trip was 2/3 as long as my 1970 trip, but covered many, if not all, of the memorable sights and sounds I remember from long ago.) Long in planing (dating back about three years, at least), I wanted to make this trip for two reasons: (1) to provide my kids an opportunity to experience a similar reverie of nature's beauty and/or a "spiritually awakening" as I had at their age (mission accomplished on both counts!), and (2) to give myself an opportunity to re-experience memories of a bygone time that I now, and will always, cherish. It is in the unabashed failure to achieve this second goal that I wish to focus on in the words that follow.

Despite my longing for - and all my earnest efforts to recreate - the exuberance of my youthful adventure, and though there were certainly moments during which time's ineffable veil parted just a bit to reveal to my mind's eye a dim indistinct sepia-like 'print' of what I saw 42 years ago, the sad truth is that I was thoroughly and at all times aware of being inextricably mired in a 51 yo body, with all its attendant life's bumps and bruises, experiences, and never-ending responsibilities; a fact that my 10 yo self could neither fully anticipate nor fathom! Try as I might, and cliche-ridden though it may be, I found it impossible to recapture the essence of my remembered youth. Except - that is - through watching my children dance to the tune of their own blissful reverie, and by engaging in photography.

What I yearned for most of all (from my experience as a 10 yo) was what I remember as a pure innocence of being; a joyful and unconscious participation in nature's rhythms. I had absolutely no concerns, no worries, no pressures of life (or panic over whether - after enjoying the "view" at 12K ft on Colorado's trail ridge road - I would be able to safely drive a 12 foot wide RV down twisting hairpin turns in lanes barely a foot wider and roads that fall off 8% grades and plunge thousands of feet down on either side!). I remember just "being in the moment," playing, laughing, hiking, splashing in lake water, and pausing on mountaintops - with nary a conscious thought - to gaze out into the infinite expanse of our western landscapes. But there were far too many distracting and nagging thoughts intruding into the 51 yo version of my younger self to allow such innocence (though memories of how easy - how effortless - it once was - and is, for my children! - reminded me that it is not the state that is inaccessible, but my all-but-convincing left-brain attitude that makes it only appear to be inaccessible). In truth, it was not my 51 yo body that was the problem, but that I had forgotten that the "I" that had experienced all those wonderful things in 1970 has not aged at all. 

Rather than quietly and gracefully surrendering to the flow of time and nature, I was, so to speak, swimming against the tide, desperately trying to turn back time to reinsert myself into a long-deceased body and mind so that I could re-experience the past exactly as it - and I - were back then, 42 years ago. But my soul was already where I needed to be; where I was, in 1970, in 2012, and whenever - and wherever - else I need to be. It is a timeless, yearning-less state forged by a numinous connection between self and nature. And, as so often happens (with me, at least), photography reminded me of my foolishness. 

The child does not yearn to return to anything, or to any time or state; it simply delights in being, in experiencing. As I tuned out my incessant left-brain confusion, and refocused my attention on the beauty around me, my hand instinctively reached for my camera, and all yearnings ceased. Numinous self-actualization...

"It's also helpful to realize that this

very body that we have, 

that's sitting right here right now... 

with its aches and it pleasures...

 is exactly what we need 

to be fully human, 

fully awake, fully alive."

- Pema Chödrön (1936 - )

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).

I took How Many Pictures on Vacation?

As is obvious from the post dates of my blog entries, there has (yet again!) been quite a dry-spell of late as far as my blog-posting goes. The culprit, as almost always, has nothing to do with lack of interest - if anything, my ever-patient muse and I are bubbling over with creative ideas - but lack of time, owing to "day job" pressures. So, on the heels of many more papers, study proposals, meetings and briefings that I can count (while staying nominally sane), my wife and I finally found a few days of solace in beautiful Siesta Key, Florida. In a strange (nested) synchronicity, as I was completing the book I took for our trip that dealt with the psychology and physics of synchronous events (Deciphering the Cosmic Number, by Arthur Miller), the DVD my in-laws were watching upon our return to Coral Gables (where they were kind enough to look after the kids while we were away) was Koyaanisqatsi. Koyaanisqatsi, which in the Hopi language means "crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living", is a remarkable film made in the early 1980s on that general theme, and scored by Philip Glass. It also perfectly describes the inner discord I currently feel: a profound lack of balance between the two worlds that define me; one of the intellect, which is filled with equations and computer code, the other of art and other aesthetic sensibilities, which has been getting the short-end of the proverbial stick these days. Seeing the hypnotic surreal-like images of the film as we stepped into my in-laws' house instantly crystallized for me the conflict that has been brewing inside of myself during the last few months, as more and more of my energy has been channeled into purely "intellectual" pursuits (sans art).

While the imbalance unfortunately persists, its complementary part has at least been nourished in a small way by our brief 4-day sojourn to the Gulf waters. To say it was a joy to walk around with my camera strapped to my neck (something I have not done for well over two months, and one of the longest such stretches in recent memory), would be a deep understatement. Which brings me to the actual point of this blog entry, whose title recounts the words I silently uttered to myself when I looked at what I downloaded from my compact flash cards after getting back home to Virginia: "I took how many pictures on vacation?" (A clue to the answer lies in the number of images that make up the "quintic" shown above.)

The interesting part is that there are two correct answers to this question, and that each is both surprising and not. Most importantly, the answers together have given me an insight into my style of picture taking, which I now realize has undergone a bit of a transformation. Allow me to explain.

On the one hand, objectively speaking, I came home with quite a few images (in the relatively brief time I had to actually wander around, and as witnessed by the total number of files on my cards), about 1000. On the other hand, the actual number of distinct images - by which I mean a set of images such that all "loosely similar" photos are counted as a "single image" - is considerably, and suggestively, smaller. By this reckoning, I came away from our trip with exactly five distinct images!

Apart from a few unimportant and eminently forgettable "just grab the shot" shots, by far the majority of the remaining ~980 shots I took on this trip are so similar to one of the five illustrative images above that what I was effectively doing - albeit unconsciously - was simultaneously working on five mini-portfolios. Which also represents a mini-transformation in the way I "do photography" nowadays.

My wife was the first to notice (a few short day-trips ago) that I spend far less time taking "indiscriminate" shots than before. That is, if strolling in a park, say, I am much less inclined to pause to take a picture of something (and even less inclined to bother setting up a tripod) than I was a few years ago. On the other hand, on those occasions where something does catch my eye, I am also much more likely to spend a considerably longer time setting up, composing, finding alternate angles, waiting for better light, and so on. Of course, nothing in the second set of activities is anything new per se (for this is the common "work space" that most photographers naturally live in). What is revealing to me is: (1) that I am doing so much less of the first kind of "snap and shoot" photography while in the company of others, including my wife (as normally, when out and about with my camera, I both desire to take pictures and not bludgeon others' patience), and (2) that my wife has noticed (even before I did) that when I pick now up my camera, it almost always presages a long local photo session, focused on a specific subject, and is rarely about "taking that one shot." Even a few carefully composed shots of the surf on a beach at Siesta Key simply will not do anymore; I need to spend a few hours taking over a 100!

What is perhaps even more revealing (to me, anyway, as I reflect on what else this says about my own ever-evolving creative process), is that I am not trying to find the proverbial "best shot" of a sequence that will serve as the "keeper" of the group. Rather I am deliberately (in hindsight;-) methodically stitching together a multilayered view of my experience of a single moment. Each image is recorded not because I think it will merely serve as an added "exemplar" of a set from which I'll eventually select a representative "best of" series. Rather, each image is taken in the belief that not only will it almost surely be a part of a "keeper" set (imperfections and all), but that - in and of itself - it represents an important element of a broader multi-image view of the interval of time during which my attention was focused on revealing something about my experience while taking this set of pictures. By way of analogy, my pictures are slowly taking on the character of words and sentences (intended to convey richer tones and meanings, and used as grammatical components of a larger, hopefully more nuanced, body of work, even if that body of work is only about a relatively short experience at one location), rather than paragraphs or completed "stories" (as before). Even more succinctly, I am finding myself taking far fewer images than ever before as intentionally isolated images, captured solely for whatever purpose a single image may serve to convey some meaning. Again, there is nothing strikingly new in this observation, as photographers do this sort of thing do all the time; at least if we examine the final body of work they produce to complete a given "project" (it is also the Lenswork "model" of focusing on themed portfolios rather than "greatest hits"). What is new - to me - is that this process has apparently now become so innate a part of my creative process, that it occurs, naturally, even within the rhythms of an otherwise routine photo-safari.

So, what better way to convey the "essence" of a wonderfully relaxing, much needed, break from work, than by a portfolio of quintics that reveal glimpses of the five - and only five ;-) photographs I took on my vacation?

Postscript #1: For those of you interested in exploring the fascinating life-long relationship between C.G. Jung and Wolfgang Pauli (one of the 20th Century's great physicists), additional references include: Pauli and Jung: A Meeting of Two Great Minds (by David Lindorff) and The Innermost Kernel (by Suzanne Gieser). Moreover, if you are in any way interested in Jung, you will surely want to find a place that has a hardcopy of a truly extraordinary (and extraordinarily expensive!) book, Jung's Red Book (I recently saw one at a local Barnes and Noble). An on-line perusal of sample pages simply cannot do justice to the magic contained therein. Jung had worked in secret on this book for decades, and it has only now been released (for the first time) after another two decades' worth of scholarship. You can read about its story in this New York Times book report. I would go so far as to say that even if Jung did nothing of value in psychology, and the Red Book were stripped of all its wondrous prose (and there is a lot of it, agruably including some of Jung's best) to include only the images Jung drew to illustrate the dreams he explores in it (so that we judge Jung's lifelong oeuvre by nothing other than the pictures in this one incredible book), Jung would go down as an artist of the highest caliber. Even if you have only a casual interest in psychology, dreams, and/or Jung, I would urge you to look at this magnificent book for its art alone!

Postscript #2: In case there is any confusion, the five images (or image series) are, respectively (from left to right in the samples above): (1) beach/sand plants and vines, (2) close-ups of my mother-in-law's knick-knacks (as viewed on her dining-room table), (3) surf abstracts, (4) cracks in the painted lines (defining lane-boundaries on small roads in Siesta Key), and (5) close-ups of patterns on paper weights and easter eggs.

Homage to Friedrich

As I've alluded to several times over my last few posts (since returning from a trip to Scotland my wife and I took in August), Scotland is a place that inspires meditation; of both outer and inner realities. Particularly if one is traveling, as we did, to Orkney and Skye - where it is not unusual to spend a few hours driving from vista to vista with hardly another car passing, and only the grazing sheep and cows for roadside companions - one has a chance to reflect on this magnificent land of light, wind, and magic, and one's own ephemeral existence in the universe that surrounds it, in an immersively hypnotic silence. (I've posted a gallery of shots from Scotland here.)

In-between shots, or while adjusting my tripod, or searching my camera bag for a filter, I periodically found my wife gazing out toward the infinite horizon, motionless, lost in a figurative and literal sea of tranquility, her soul communing with place and timelessness; offering herself, as it were, to eternity, or just being. On occasion, when not transfixed myself by what caused my wife's reverie, I managed to train my lens in her direction. I call the series of shots that resulted, a few of which are displayed here, my "Homage to Friedrich" (after Caspar David Friedrich, the 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter known, among other things, for silhouetting contemplative dark figures against mysterious landscapes).

The image at the top of this blog entry was taken near Teangue, Skye, on the next to last day of our stay in Scotland (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 (in my crouched position, glaring starry-eyed at the compositional marvels on the exposed beach, I was - ironically - "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.

Four other shots from the "Homage to Friedrich" series: (1) Gazing westward from atop a walking path near South Duntulm, Skye:


(2) Looking northward from a beach near Nairn:


(3) Looking west from Castle Stuart in Scotland's Highlands:


(4) Contemplating Orkney's mysteries towards the west from a mound directly adjacent to the Ring o'Brodgar:

Hey Fella, Would you Mind...?

Audacious, brash, brazen, daring, disrespectful, forward, impertinent, impudent, presumptuous, rash, rude, shameless, ...

One of my pet peeves, in and out of photography, is what I call the "in your face" approach some people take to get my attention (I am sure I am not alone is despising this phenomenon to the "beyond measurable category" level). I am emphatically not referring to people who are quiet and polite; (which most are, of course); and certainly not those who patiently wait for me to finish whatever it is I am doing - usually hovering over my tripod, bending up and down and sideways, while gesticulating wildly with my elbows trying to find a reasonable composition (my wife refers to my picture-taking process as akin to the wild thrashings of a stark raving mad broken-pretzel) - before introducing themselves.

No, the class of people I am referring to are of a distinct "Hey Fella, Would you mind...?" bent of mind. The kind who - regardless of how busy they must surely see you are (it is hard to be "gesticulating wildly" without at least appearing to be busy doing something ;-) - nonetheless suddenly, brazenly, and anything-but-quietly approach you - often tapping you on the shoulder for good measure, presumably trying to increase their chances of getting your attention - to demand (yes demand!) that you stop what you are doing in order to take their picture. As preposterous as this may sound - come now, people don't really do that, do they? (yes they do!) - this has happened to me for so long, so consistently, in so many different places, that I never go on any of my photo-safaris without expecting (and bracing for) at least one such encounter.

Here is a typical "Hey Fella, Would you mind...?" encounter I had recently on a trip my wife and I took to Grand Cayman island (to get away from it all during Spring break). My wife and I are on the beach in front of our hotel. The sun is setting (with precious few moments left before it disappears below the horizon). I have my tripod set up a few feet from shore, and am attempting to get a few Hiroshi Sugimoto-like (i.e., looooong exposure) shots. I have my trusty Singh-Ray vari-ND neutral density filter screwed on. And I am very much "in the moment"; ticking off the seconds of a shot and anticipating only a few compositional opportunities left before the light disappears for the night.

Behind me, I faintly hear some whispers (though with an obvious urgency). "There are only a few moments left! Get someone!" A family. A man, a woman, and two teenage kids. I hear feet shuffling on the sand, ice sloshing in a glass (a rum punch?); voices getting closer. "He's busy." "So what, the lights going!" Two pairs of feet shuffling now; I also hear a few giggles from the kids. "I can't bother him now!" (A faint glimmer of hope that at least one member of this party has some decency!...but alas...) "He can take his pictures later...ask him, go ask him!" I hear: "Ah, fella, would you mind...?" (I'm not kidding you!) Keep in mind, I'm huddled over my camera, and in the middle of a minute-long exposure. I keep my posture, and say (without lifting my head) - loudly enough for him to hear, but with an even tone - "I'm in the middle of a shot right now; this is not a good time." "But I just heard the shutter; you've taken your shot already!" I can't believe this comment (I sigh, inwardly, but keep my eye at the camera - 45s, 46s, 47s, ... - and remain silent.

I feel a light tap on my shoulder (I am not making this up!) "Hey fella, didn't you hear me? My wife and I would like you to take a picture of our family before the sun goes down." I still - somehow (!) - manage to keep my composure. I remain glued to my camera, but say, firmly this time, "Sir, I am busy right now. Perhaps you can find someone else to take your picture?" I should point out that the beach was filled with people, many of whom had their own cameras; and at least one other person had a tripod (which he was not even using, and was content simply enjoying the sunset view).

The man persists: "Fella, there are only a few minutes left!" An assertion that finally grabs my full attention. I stand upright, look his way, and say - rather angrily I admit - "Yes, I know! I'd very much like to use this time to do my work, if you don't mind!" He doesn't let go: "Hey man, it's just one shot, come on..." Now, I know there must be some Emily Post etiquette behavior guide for situations such as this (there ought to be, if not). I grit my teeth - outwardly trying to smile - take his camera, move in front of the man, his wife, and two giggling teenagers, and tale a quick shot with their camera. "Thanks man," is all I get for my efforts (as I run back to my tripod)...almost. As I prepare to hit the shutter one last time (to capture the shot you see reproduced above), I feel another tap - I can't make this stuff up! - "Hey fella, can you do one more, please, without the kids this time?" At least he said please!

I have dozens of stories very similar to this one. An unforgettable "encounter" happened in Santorini, Greece last year, and involved a German couple who spoke not one word of English (nor I German). That made it both better and worse (and in hindsight - but only in hindsight - hilarious), but I'll leave the details to your imagination :-) There are no deep lessons or morals here, save for the obvious ones: (1) people will be people (on both sides of the camera); (2) always plan for one or two rude people (that way you won't be surprised); and (3) it pays to not lose your cool (had I lost mine, I would not have gotten the one "keeper" of the night, the shot at top).

Postscript. For those kind readers who have, over time, picked up on my penchant for Borgesian/Godelian recursive mysteries, be assured that I did toy with the idea of weaving my tale around an infinite regress induced by my having thrown the "audacious, brash, brazen, daring, disrespectful, forward, impertinent, impudent, presumptuous, rash, rude, shameless,.." man's words right back at him: "Hey fella, would you mind...?" (Which would have made as much sense for me to use on him, as he clearly believed there was in using them on me.) In some unknown universe in the limitless multiverse we occupy an infinitesimally small point in, there is a world, much like our own, where an "encounter" between a photographer and a man wishing the photographer to take a picture of his family never ever ends: Hey fella, would you mind...?, Hey fella, would you mind...?, Hey fella, would you mind...?, ...

The Gentle Madness Known as Abstract Photography

The "abstract" image to the left is what is "left" of a framed print called "Fractal Dignity" that was part of a one-man show in Coral Gables I had in Dec 2007. I had it (along with other prints remaining from the exhibit) sent from storage this past week to my mom's home in Sea Cliff, NY (Long Island), so she could hang it in my dad's old art studio on the second floor. Unfortunately, the shipment arrived in deplorable condition. Most of the glass is completely fractured, with many of the prints scratched beyond repair. Other frames that appear unaffected at first glance, contain broken shards and smaller pieces of glass trapped between an otherwise solid piece of glass and the matte underneath, hinting at frayed and broken edges of glass along the inner walls of the surrounding metal frame. The frames themselves have also been badly scratched, as though the package delivery service used them for an impromtu baseball game (or two, or three).

  

Needless to say, my mom and I were shocked when we opened the first of four (similarly configured boxes) when my son and I arrived for a short weekend trip for him to see his "Baba." The outer condition of the boxes betrayed a bit of what we soon found inside - the boxes were smashed, dented and had major tears and rips along the edges - but we were not prepared for the extent or severity of damage. It took about two hours to fully document and inventory the damage, picture by picture; with the bottom line being that fully none of the 24 frames are in "sellable" condition, and will have to be reframed. Moreover, at least half of the prints will have to be redone as well. As for me, I quickly went through the Kubler-Rossian stages of grief over a "death of a loved one" (the "loved ones" being my prints): denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (did I mention anger?!? ;-). I knew I finally had my emotions under (some semblance of) control when - though still miffed; good grief, I'm still miffed, as a write this a few days after the fact! - I found myself picking up my camera not to document the damage, but to actually start composing what appeared to me a rather nice little "abstract" (as you see documented at the top of this entry). Photographers - especially those whose "eye" is attracted to abstract forms - are strange creatures indeed. My 10yo son stared incredulously, dropped jawed, as his dad - who moments before was apoplectic with primal rage directed at the universe in general and the UPS delivery service in particular - suddenly quieted down, got "that look" in his eye, starting circling one of the open boxes with all of its exposed shards of glass and mangled metal, and started clicking away as if nothing at all was the matter. A lesson about how accidents can serve as catalysts for transforming representational art into abstraction? Perhaps; or it may just be another everyday example of the gentle madness known as abstract photography :-)

Postscript. Though the outcome of my claim is at this time unknown, the shipment was insured. Hopefully, that should defray at least some of the cost (though not the time) of reprinting and reframing these images.

Abstract Glyphs: Mysterious Purveyors of Hidden Harmonies

What does Athens, Greece have to do with the Carpathian Mountains? That's a trick question, of course, as the "connection" between the two depends on first unraveling the meaning of the enigmatic title of this short blog entry... which has to do with a lucky find of (ostensibly "hidden") glyphs, and musing on them as mysterious purveyors of some unfathomably deep cosmic truth. (Of course, one is free to just revel in their just-as-ineffable quiet beauty without succumbing to my usual Borgesian overtones of over-intepretation ;-)

I have previously written about a trip my wife and I took to Greece earlier this summer. Though my discussion focused almost exclusively on Santorini (the second leg of our journey), we also stayed in Athens and Crete. While I have yet to "develop" the raw files from the other two legs of our journey (and the obligatory shots of the Acropolis, the Palace at Knossos, and Samaria Gorge), I wish to share a few images from a growing portfolio I've tentatively entitled Abstract Glyphs: Mysterious Purveyors of Hidden Harmonies, and which came about by chance in Athens.

After spending the first three nights of our trip in Athens, my wife and I took a cab to the port of Piraeus to catch a ferry to Santorini. Since the ferry was delayed a few hours, I had some time to prowl around with my camera. Indeed, I had the run of virtually the whole open dock area; but could not stray too far - say, back into the city - for fear of missing our ferry.

So, what might catch a photographer's eye on a small city dock? And what does this all have to do with glyphs and the Carpathian mountains? My eye quickly homed in onto the two dozen or so oversized rubber dinghies hanging over the side of the dock to prevent the moored ferries from slamming their hulls against the concrete overhangs (which you can just about make out from the link to a Google satellite view given above). Or, more precisely, my eye quickly homed in on the splotches of colorful paint that adorned nearly all of the rubber dinghies on the dock. What immediately came to mind, as I approached the first dinghy for a closer inspection, is a marvelous - and surrealistically strange and funny - novel I had read last year by Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz called Cosmos.

The novel begins as two young men meet - by chance - on the way to a Polish resort town in the Carpathian mountains. They are soon drawn to a particular rooming house as a direct (if unpredictable) consequence of seeing a sparrow hanged on a piece of wire hooked over a branch; an event that not only convinces the two that it has some deep hidden meaning, but is but a precursor of ever more bizarre and intricate "decodings of meaning" the two must make to understand their (increasingly confusing) lives. As the novel unfolds, our protagonists proceed to "discover" (though "conjure" may be more accurate) ever more recessed layers of "hidden meaning" from what (to all outside observers) are nothing but meaningless everyday things and events. They see arrows in ceiling stains that point in directions they must follow; and search through other people's rooms hoping to find important "clues," such a nail pounded partway into a wall just above the floor. Though disturbing on many levels (I'm leaving a lot out of this short description), the novel reminds us - and me, during the moment I took to walk over to inspect my first "paint splotched dingy" in Athens - that meaning exists in the world (or in a place, or encoded in a given object or symbol) only when there is someone to decode it.

There is no "meaning" in a signal without a receiver; and a receiver will interpret a signal as meaningless if it does not have the proper context in which to decode the signal's message. But what if there were no intended receiver, but there was a context in which a signal might nonetheless reveal a meaning? And what if there was no message sender (more precisely, no intentionally sent message), but a receiver was nonetheless present; and - purely by chance(!) - was in the proper context to receive a "message"? Is the whole world, perhaps, best described as a vast surreptitious web of timeless "meanings" in search of local senders and receivers?

Such were my thoughts, and such was the state of my mind - which also provided an inner meta-context - in which I took nearly a hundred photographs of "Hidden Glyphs of Unknown Meaning" at the port of Piraeus in Athens. Were these messages, I wondered; encoded by some mysterious (perhaps long deceased) author? Were they clues to the evolution of the universe? Hints for my own life's journey? Or just random irrelevant scrawls of disinterested natural forces (that confuse and confound unsuspecting errant passerbys with their siren-song of illusory order when meaning seems to magically arise in an otherwise random context)? What cosmic messages are locked in these hidden glyphs of unknown meaning? Is there perhaps an even deeper level of understanding - and by whom? - of the hyper-glyph that I unwittingly unleashed into the world by using my camera to muse on the indecipherable glyphs I found in Athens?

"Boinga, Boinga, Boinga" Shots

My family and I recently returned from a "mini vacation" in the Adirondacks, near Lake Placid, NY. The trip evoked many wonderful memories of taking similar trips with my mom and dad over 30 years ago. Though I haven't been in those parts for many years, the Adirondacks' unique charm and quiet ambiance almost instantaneously enveloped my soul. I felt as though I had come home.

Since the trip was geared more for "family" and camping, I spent relatively little time prowling with my camera. Of course, I did manage to catch a few images of the "rocks and water" variety...particularly on the ausable river.

Indeed, there is a short story attached to the images I took there, which I'd like to share in this blog entry. The title - "Boinga, Boinga, Boinga" Shots - refers to the "bounce" (translated as a "Boinga" sound) that all intrepid photographers perched on exposed trail bridges over the river go through while patiently waiting for the reverberations caused by (largely disinterested) passerbys to die down so that they can finally click the camera's shutter. Since I wanted to produce silky-smooth water flow, I needed my exposure times to be fairly long (> 5 to 10 sec). But, being the tourist attraction that it is, the ausable river trails are naturally overrun by adventurers; not all of whom appreciate the "fine art" of taking long exposures. Capturing a shot such as the one that appears at the top of this entry thus requires an enormous amount of patience; both on the part of the photographer and, unfortunately, on the part of the passerbys.

This particular shot was the result of - what must have seemed to an outside objective observer - a comedy of errors. First I had to wait for the clouds to block out the sun. A process which played itself out multiple times over the course of a hour or more, as small bands drifted in and out of view. Next, I had to "coordinate" cloud-blocked composition opportunities with stretches of time during which the bridge was entirely free of passerby footsteps. This was far from easy. I had to make quick sideways glances to the left and right, while holding my camera in position for a preplanned shot. Of course, there were several "opportunities" which misfired. Typically, if I clicked the shutter and the bridge was free of hikers, a cloud would dissipate faster than I had anticipated and the shot was ruined. Just as typically, the clouds would stay in place and the light would be just right, but a hiker (or two, or three, or an entire family!) would appear - mysteriously - from out of the woods (and off the trail) and noisily make their way - boinga, boinga, boinga - across the bridge.

Once, just for good measure, a family of three started on their way from one end of the bridge toward me and my tripod near the middle, and stopped in mid-stride when they saw me lift my eye and head (and may have heard me mutter something like "Arghh" after missing a chance to get a shot). Seeing that the cloud cover was still good and that the party was (at least for the moment) motionless - and upon hearing one of them say to the others, "Hey, look, a photographer is taking pictures, let's be quiet" (which brought a smile to my face) I bent back over my viewfinder and was preparing to press the shutter, when - boinga, boinga, boinga - forward (and onward and closer) went the boots.

The unfolding events were far from over. I lifted my head, uttered another soft "Arghh" under my breath, and felt the group halt again (and heard the same member softly admonish the others, "Hey, he's not done, hold on a minute.") Back to my viewfinder I go, only to see the clouds break and the bright sun beat down on the water. I lift my head back up, this time because of the blinding light; but this time hear, "OK, he's done, let's go." Before his sentence is finished, the cloud cover comes back and my eye goes back to the viewfinder, only to see the effects of the - boinga, boinga, boinga - footsteps coming closer to me. I keep my eye glued to the finder, hoping for a miracle. As the group passes me, one of the hikers accidentally trips over one of my tripod's legs (though there was ample room to maneuver around). I straighten up and accept the sincere and immediate apology; but as I do the cloud cover vanishes.

The group of hikers is now standing a few feet from me, and is both quiet and intrigued by what I am taking pictures of. I answer a few questions (while waiting for the clouds to come back to block the sun), and - seeing the cloud cover return - quickly turn back to my camera, and hear a "Hey, good luck with your shots fella" followed by the now omnipresent boinga, boinga, boinga sound (and reverberation) as the group moves away. I lift my head (in half disgust, but with still a bit of humor at the Monty-Pythonesque predicament my desire to capture this little scene has placed me in) and see the group, once again - and for the last time, since they are now getting close to the other side of the bridge - stop, and no doubt seeing my increasing angst - sincerely wish to allow me to take a "quiet" shot. Gratefully, I bend down, see that the cloud cover is still good, and take my shot. As soon as I hear the click of the shutter after the exposure is complete (though there is no way the group of hikers could have heard from where they were standing), I feel the boinga, boinga, boinga of their steps as they step off the bridge and move off into the woods and out of site. That whole process, to capture that one shot, took about 40 min.

When I got back to my car, and after I had a chance to reflect on my experience, I admonished myself for my infantile-like reaction to the not-always-accomodating natural elements (cloud cover vs no cloud cover) and the presence of hikers with heavy boots. Apart from the obvious fact that I had no more right to be on the bridge than the hikers (so that, in truth, they "owed" me nothing by way of accommodating my purpose for being there) , we were all a vital part of a little self-contained "world" out there on that bridge. And the hikers, whose boinga, boinga, boinga certainly affected my ability to capture an image at the instant that their boots were going "boinga, boinga, boinga," actually helped me produce what I feel is a better image than what I was likely to have captured were it not for their presence.

The simple reason is that the interplay between the bright sun, cloud cover and the boinga, boinga, boinga all conspired to slow me down. These elements collectively helped ease my mind and soul to a slower pace; one much more attuned to the Adirondacks' own natural rhythms. I may have wanted to take a quick picture and go, but I didn't take the time to ask the ausable river whether it wanted its picture taken in such a quick and impersonal manner. As a photographer, I ought to have known better. And I humbly and sincerely thank the merry band of hikers - who kept going boinga, boinga, boinga - for reminding me of the need to just slow down, immerse myself in the environment and quietly listen to my subject.