Secret of the Sea

"My soul is full of longing
for the secret of the sea,
and the heart of the great ocean
sends a thrilling pulse through me."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882)

"Time is more complex near
the sea than in any other place,
for in addition to the circling
of the sun and the turning
of the seasons, the waves
beat out the passage of time
on the rocks and the tides rise
and fall as a great clepsydra."

- John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968)

Like Lichen on Rock

"Say you could view a time lapse film of our planet: what would you see? Transparent images moving through light, “an infinite storm of beauty.

The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth’s face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting, and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up- mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back.

A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash-frames.

Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and crumble, like paths of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cities appear, and rivers sift silt onto their rooftops; more cities emerge and spread in lobes like lichen on rock. The great human figures of history, those intricate, spirited tissues whose split second in the light was too brief an exposure to yield any image but the hunched shadowless figures of ghosts.

Slow it down more, come closer still.

A dot appears, a flesh-flake.
It swells like a balloon; it moves,
circles, slows, and vanishes.

This is your life."

- Annie Dillard (1945 - )
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Spiritual Experience

"You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience.
You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience."

- Teilhard De Chardin (1881- 1955)

Knowing Nothing of Space

 "We do not know space.

We do not see it,

we do not hear it,

we do not feel it.

We are standing in the middle of it,

we ourselves are part of it,

but we know nothing about it."

- M.C. Escher (1898 - 1972)

Loosely Conjoined Cells of a Tissue

"A solitary ant, afield, cannot be considered to have much of anything on his mind; indeed, with only a few neurons strung together by fibers, he can’t be imagined to have a mind at all, much less a thought. He is more like a ganglion on legs. Four ants together, or ten, encircling a dead moth on a path, begin to look more like an idea. They fumble and shove, gradually moving the food toward the Hill, but as though by blind chance. It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.

...

Not all social animals are social with the same degree of commitment. In some species, the members are so tied to each other and interdependent as to seem the loosely conjoined cells of a tissue. The social insects are like this; they move, and live all their lives, in a mass; a beehive is a spherical animal. In other species, less compulsively social, the members make their homes together, pool resources, travel in packs or schools, and share the food, but any single one can survive solitary, detached from the rest. Others are social only in the sense of being more or less congenial, meeting from time to time in committees, using social gatherings as ad hoc occasions for feeding and breeding. Some animals simply nod at each other in passing, never reaching even a first-name relationship."

- Lewis Thomas (1913 - 1993)
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

Listen When the Mind is Quiet

"I hope that you will listen, but not with the memory of what you already know; and this is very difficult to do. You listen to something, and your mind immediately reacts with its knowledge, its conclusions, its opinions, its past memories. It listens, inquiring for a future understanding.

Just observe yourself, how you are listening, and you will see that this is what is taking place. Either you are listening with a conclusion, with knowledge, with certain memories, experiences, or you want an answer, and you are impatient. You want to know what it is all about, what life is all about, the extraordinary complexity of life. You are not actually listening at all.

You can only listen when the mind is quiet, when the mind doesn't react immediately, when there is an interval between your reaction and what is being said. Then, in that interval there is a quietness, there is a silence in which alone there is a comprehension which is not intellectual understanding.

If there is a gap between what is said and your own reaction to what is said, in that interval, whether you prolong it indefinitely, for a long period or for a few seconds - in that interval, if you observe, there comes clarity. It is the interval that is the new brain. The immediate reaction is the old brain, and the old brain functions in its own traditional, accepted, reactionary, animalistic sense.

When there is an abeyance of that, when the reaction is suspended, when there is an interval, then you will find that the new brain acts, and it is only the new brain that can understand, not the old brain"

- Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986)

Communicating the Joys of Doing Photography

“A great photograph is one that fully expresses
what one feels, in the deepest sense,
about what is being photographed.”
- Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984)

To my ever-patient readers, I will dispense with my usual (and likely tiresome) "excuses" for yet another prolonged period of inactivity on my blog. Suffice to say, that photography is something I am able to pursue only as time - i.e., "day job" constraints - allow; and to which I look forward to soon returning. But this is not to say that the pleasures of photography are ever far from my mind (or soul); even as the making of photographs goes through the inevitable crests and troughs of daily realities. It is in this spirit that I offer not one of my own recent photographs (since there are none I dare share), but instead introduce - and provide links to - a few prodigiously talented YouTube photographers/storytellers that I'm sure my kind readers would enjoy spending some quality time with. By "talented," I mean that these photographers are not just gifted artists (something that is immediately obvious by looking at their online portfolios), but that they all possess a preternatural gift of (seemingly effortlessly) conveying the joy of doing photography through visual narrative. As I wallow in my current state of creative non-being, I have repeatedly turned to these "YouTubers" for inspiration, solace, and the simple pure pleasure of immersing myself in beautiful imagery. (To be clear: though I sense a deep creative kinship with each of these storytellers, I do not know nor have I ever met any of them, except through the videos and portfolios they post online.)

So, who are these magnificent "aesthetic storytellers"? I follow about a dozen or so photographers on YouTube (and there are certainly many more that deserve attention), but the ones whose channels I go back to again and again - and why I always smile when my iPhone notifies me that a new video has been posted - are: Henry Turner, Thomas Heaton, Nigel Danson, Simon Booth, and Gary Gough. 

First and foremost, these are all magnificent photographers, in the purest sense of the word; i.e., if they did nothing but stare into a camera each week and pull up whatever new images they produced since their last video, it would still be a privilege to view. But each of them does so much more (as explained below). Overall, their channels are mostly landscape oriented (which is easy to understand, since they all live in the U.K. and are within easy reach of the Lake District, the Scottish Highlands and the Isle of Skye, among other spectacular places), but it would be foolish to blindly categorize the imagery that any of these photographers produce as "just landscapes," for their artistic sensibilities and repertoires run considerably deeper.

"Photography for me is not looking, it's feeling.
If you can't feel what you're looking at,
then you're never going to get others to
feel anything when they look at your pictures."
- Don McCullin (1935 - ) 

Turner, who is my favorite (for reasons I'll immediately explain), has a bit less experience than some of the others in this esteemed group (Turner posted his first video only four years ago, while Heaton's first is seven years old and Gough's eight), but - my oh my - what a God-given gift Turner has to inspire even time- and weather-beaten old photographers such as myself (for whom straggling down a short slope at a local park to get to a "shot" depends more on the state of my 61yo knees than how good the shot is that I think I might get!). Turner's joy of photography - his utter delight in just being out and about in nature, hiking, exploring, doing photography (or, sometimes, just looking, with his camera still in the bag) - infuses each and every frame of the videos he posts. He comes across as a genuinely unassuming, humble and creative soul; his instinctive reaction to beauty appears deeply visceral (on at least one occasion, I recall seeing him shed a tear because of what he was "seeing"). His infectious enthusiasm for being/reveling in nature is utterly mesmerizing and intoxicating (in a good way)! I challenge you to watch any of Henry's videos without discovering a smile on your face, and finding yourself in a relaxed, meditative state of mind after seeing his trademark signoff - "Out!" - at the end. Turner is an impassioned, sometimes humorously self-deprecating, master photographer and storyteller; and his stunning videos are experiential wonders. A few of my favorites are: Isle-of-Sky, Stop complaining about the conditions, and What landscape photography gives.

Heaton is the first "YouTuber" I became a devoted follower of a few years ago, and - as is true for the others in this group - I rarely miss any of his episodes. He is both a consummate photographer and an experienced, and creative, YouTuber. Indeed, I am often left in awe at the care he takes in putting together and editing his videos. All are masterful, and are a treat to experience. His 2021 two-part series recounting his north-to-south hike on Scotland's Isle-of-Skye (part 1 and part 2) is one of my personal favorites. Heaton is as comfortable - and gifted at - capturing "Wagnerian" epic like vistas, the likes of which most of us will never get to see (simply because we lack the will or stamina, or both, to trek up some mountainside hours before a glorious sunrise reveals itself at its peak!), as he is at finding quiet abstract compositions of nothing but sand on some otherwise nondescript beach.

"Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field."
- Peter Adams

Danson, who started his channel about five years ago, has a quiet and inviting demeanor. The relaxing tone of his voice and cadence gently lulls you into a creatively receptive state of mind, as he explores the practice and philosophy of what it means to "do photography." Endearingly, he is often accompanied on his "adventures" by his adorable English Springer Spaniel, Pebbles. (Equally endearing, at least to me, is that Danson and I share a love of physics: Danson's Ph.D. is in optics, mine is in complex systems.) While Danson is a superlative all-around landscape photographer (and founded the World Landscape Photographer competition in 2020), his work with trees is among the most accomplished I've ever seen. A few favorites: woodland photography, trees of scotland, and woodland photography tips.

Simon Booth, whose channel I have only recently "discovered" (but who has been uploading video content for five years), is both a landscape and wildlife photographer with over 30 years experience. Like Danson, he a scientist; specifically, an ecologist. His research interests often play an integral part in his adventures, as he uses his scientific knowledge to help guide his aesthetic choices. Dedicated viewers of his channel learn as much about the flora and fauna of the places he saunters in as they do about the creative process. His graceful unassuming manner belies a keen eye for composition. If ever there was a photographer who can find a photograph where others see nothing - with the magical ability to transform (what to most people's eyes, even to other photographer's eyes, is) an "uninteresting" leaf or fungus into an otherworldly, exquisitely beautiful image - it is Simon. He is a master of turning the "ordinary" into the extraordinary! A few of my favorite Simon Booth videos are: hidden gems, summer photography, and looking beyond the obvious.

"Don’t shoot what it looks like.
Shoot what it feels like."
- David Alan Harvey (1944 - )

Gough is a landscape, commercial, wedding, and portrait photographer, though his YouTube channel is focused mainly on landscape. What I love about Gough's videos is an amalgam of what I admire about what all five of my favorite YouTube photographers do so well. He is a talented artist, unassuming and unarrogant, knowledgeable about the art and craft of photography, takes his work seriously but not always himself doing it, and is a wonderful story teller. Gough is also a dedicated experimentalist, by which I mean that he often injects an element of "play" into his photography; such as when he recently challenged a $20 (old, old, so very old) camera to taking long exposures, combined wide-angle and telephotos shots of a railroad track and train into a single image, and discussed shooting landscapes in poor light. Gary's channel also include wonderful video tutorials on myriad specific topics; watching them is akin to being part of a master workshop (albeit, remotely, observing and learning, but - alas - unable to interact; and Gary's cheerful and inviting "video personality" certainly makes one want to engage with on a personal level). 

It is often said (as evidenced by the quotes above) that what distinguishes a "fine art" photographer from someone who merely takes "snapshots" is (in part) the ability to create an image that shows the viewer not just the "thing" or "place" the photographer was looking at, but to convey what the photographer experienced, emotionally (even spiritually) while engaged in the creative process that led to capturing the image. Each of the YouTubers introduced above shines in this regard! They all have a gift for story telling and for expressing their obvious love of being out in nature and capturing its beauty. YouTube may even be the perfect medium for communicating what it feels like to do photography, since it directly shows the photographer in his or her element; provided, of course, that there is something worth communicating, and that the photographer is skilled in doing so. YouTube provides a powerful new channel through which a special group of artists - those who are skilled equally in image making and storytelling - can engage with their followers; not by just showing them finished products of their work, but by taking viewers along with them on the walks (or hikes) the photographers themselves went on as they find and create their images. But you do not have to take my word that these five "photographer storytellers" are among the very best at communicating the joys of photography on their YouTube channels; just follow the links and enjoy the journey! 😊