Close to Home

Looking out the window today at an early winter rainy, colorless kind of day drove me to find and image with some visual warmth. Although I had thought I had posted this one lone ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had not. Like a warm, honest hug from a small, cheery child, this one reached out to me and brought me the same cheer, contrasting the world before me.

I took this image when I first started to take photographs back in the 1980s and was not even a 'photographer', but always like it for the simplicity and graphic nature of it. It is simply one of the exterior frost and interior condensation often found on the window panes in the wintertime in our area. This one was my Mother's kitchen window with the sun setting one afternoon on a very cold day.

I always thought it reminded me of a desert scene somehow, kind of like the sun perpetually rising on the crest of a sand dune.

Over my many years, I have traveled a decent part of the globe, much of it in the effort and pursuit of finding images destined for some purpose or another, but all too often, the very best images, although maybe not 'exotic' in nature, are made right around the area in which I live daily, a place I can intimately experience with depth and familiarity. Like with anything worthwhile in our lives... family and good friends, treasures are usually found close to the heart where we live in the everyday.

I hope this image brings warmth to your eyes and heart as well today.

A view in the darkness

 

As fall turns into winter, soon to come are the longer periods of darkness, something I do not enjoy. Although getting out on sunny days with snowy trees is one of my absolute favorite activities, the extended nighttime hours wears on my heart.

This image however, was taken on a winter moonlit night probably about midnight of a Red Maple tree we planted in our yard years ago. I like doing nighttime exposures, for many reasons, one being the quiet and the challenge to do so, but also for the interesting quality of light that is expressed through the reflected light from the moon. After a long exposure, it is always surprising how much can be seen and captured and I think of the animals created for the night and how they easily see, and the color shift in the camera and luminescent quality is cool to me.

Sometimes, I wish I could see in the dark (how much more pleasant that season would be) both literally and in a spiritual sense for darkness is very wearisome to both the body and the soul and leaves me grappling for purpose sometimes, just like I would stumble on a dark winters night. This past year has brought me to many places of great interest once again in creative expression, some avenues that are very new to me, opening my mind to see the world differently and some reborn from the past,  but it has also brought some times of deep darkness, where it became a concentrated effort just to keep  moving ahead.

As winter approaches once again, I am hoping for some snowy treed days ahead to help push me through the season and give me opportunities to allow me to see through the night. Perhaps if so, my heart would also be lifted in the process and I would once again find my way until spring.

Focussing with the Heart

After another long absence and not allot to say through my imagery, I was finally inspired to  post something. So in thinking about it I do have something to say, but not through my work, but that of my daughter.

On occasion, she has been out shooting with me and it has always been a fun, interesting invigorating, learning experience for both of us as photography should be. More recently she has been making some images within her own own travel experiences and is always excited to share them with me. Seeing that she has an 'eye' for making photographs when we have been out together, I am always thrilled in seeing her search out that image that is before her  and pulling it out from within the big world.

This first image, taken of a Lilly, while on a private excursion together to Long Wood Gardens here in Pa. a while back, was a revelation for her. To see the small beauty hidden inside the details of just one flower amid the mass before her. We have a copy of it on our wall at home.

These three others. are from a trip she took to Puerto Rico this spring. When she was showing me her images, there were shots of broad street or garden scenes, nice photos on their own, but within them I could see more that would interest me. Little details or designs or pieces of graphics that drew me in. I refrained from saying "see this part here" in viewing them, but then was pleased a few images later, that they were there, captured from her heart, recognizing the part of the whole that really was the 'image' to her. I am proud to share these with you and to let her know that she really has learned to focus with her heart, not just her eyes.