Ripples
a pebble dreams of falling
sinking slowly into sleep
ripples spread in silence above
A warm lazy afternoon ... cooler in the shade by the water. A stone thrown into a pond. You hear the 'plop' ... a quick, fluid sound. You look and see the ripples radiating. Think of the pebble then ... as it drifts down to the bottom ... turning perhaps ... a little sideways drift but a certain destination. The air brought down with it bubbles away leaving a sunlit trail of sparkle as it nestles on the bottom amongst a myriad others. While above the ripples spread.
Which Comes First? The Image or the Words?
On my previous post I talked about the habit of writing ... about falling out and falling back in. The post prompted a lot of discussion (thank you) ... well more than normal on this blog anyways! In the course of that discussion one question posed by blogging friend Ally stuck in my mind today; she wrote
words first?
or image?
Does it matter?
My initial response to the question was 'Image first' and although it's true that I generally choose an image and then let the words flow from there ... my answer didn't really satisfy me. Who is to say that the words weren't simmering away waiting for an image? I rarely think of the words or an idea and then go find and take a picture to illustrate it ... I know plenty of photographers who do but I'm not one. I do have some projects I'm working on that require this approach and I've discussed some of those previously.
Composing a picture is a searching, almost meditative process for me. Often I don't know exactly where I'm going with it until I arrive. I'm trying to think whether the words are there then at that moment of artistic creation? No, they're not. Not in the form as you're reading now. But then, the vision behind my thoughts ... behind my presented image was. When I present the two together, they appear simultaneously to you. There's no telling which came first ... you get to choose!
When I took this picture (in December 2011) was I thinking of the words I'd write here today? No I wasn't. I was thinking of the interconnectedness of things ... about how the structure of the leaf and the arrangement of its veins was likely an efficient method of town-planning ... about how the natural and constructed worlds shared much and that our contructed world had more to learn than perhaps the other way round.
Oh and I was holding my breath because I didn't want to cause the leaf to move.
Does it matter?
Does the fact that I wasn't, in this case, thinking of the words and the picture simultaneously matter? I don't think so. Did one influence the other? Most definitely.
Which way does it work for you? Which comes first?
Falling Out of the Habit of Writing
Falling out of the habit of writing
Not that I'm running out of things to talk about ... quite the contrary, my mind is often full of ideas and thoughts all competing to get out. Sometimes in conversation I am so internally focused on the discussion that the conversation has moved on by the time my bit is ready to go ... other times I hear someone talking, think 'that sounds interesting I should listen to that' only to find it is in fact me talking! Thankfully that weirdness doesn't happen too often.
Writing, I find, gives me an opportunity to focus, to concentrate, to refine in a way that conversation doesn't. The poems, the haiku, the questioning and searching ... it all makes more sense when written down rather than floating as abstracts in my head. That once I chose a subject to write about the rest just flows ... it's the choosing I find difficult. Like what image to post next(?) ... that is the hardest decision for me with regard to this blog. There are so many to choose from but which one conveys what I'm trying to say now? Once I decide I can find something to write about it. I do like those blogs where only the image is placed ... sometimes no text at all. They have a minimalism that I admire but still I sometimes wish I knew more about the thoughts behind it. It lends a level of understanding of what the photographer is trying to say ... what did they want you to see by placing this image in a place where you are going to see it? Why put an image up if you didn't want people to 'see' something in it.
Today, it's a picture of a mesh fence, the background fernland dissolved into a warm bokeh. The fence for me is that barrier to my mind ... the filter that lets thoughts in and out ... it's a little rusty like my writing skills of late ... I've fallen out of the habit of writing you see.
I can feel myself falling back in too ... thankfully.
Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Malua Moonlight
Rock pretending eternity Moonlight heavy on the sea Clouds bring the sky
Photograph and haiku of Malua Bay on the south coast of New South Wales. Lit here by about 8 minutes of the full moon. All is not what it seems. The moonlight softens the waves creating a smooth effect of deceptive calm ... the clouds coming in give the game away.
Suspense
My colour - your colour blending unseen against solidity As pattern is introduced My being warps it Becomes visible Clearly refracting seen only as a distortion of your regularity bending the very rays and become visible against them perfect imperfection reveals a passing lens I remember falling past you on my way to a fluidic oblivion caught the relic of a splash I made when I was someone else
Water and the refraction of light are common themes in my work. I remember being in primary school and realising that things were visible only if they shone with their own light or reflected light into my eyes. I had this little mirror I used to take to school and I would play games with it like positioning it in the grass on the oval at just the right angle so that it effectively disappeared. I would then spin around or close my eyes for a time, and proceed to look for it ... could I pick out the tiny replication that signalled where the reflection was? That moment of suspense when I thought that perhaps, this time I had actually lost the mirror... upon reflection (no pun intended) I was maybe a little odd as a child. Not that much has changed, I was in love with light even then.
When did you realise you were in love with light? Was there a moment when you really noticed it ... noticed it or simply became aware of it? Do tell :-)
Something in the wine
Three and a half seconds of dragged shuttery, fire-twirly goodness for your viewing pleasure. Have a good weekend ... what are you up to?
Gunung Batur
Oculus time again. This is a picture of Gunung Batur (Mount Batur) on the island of Bali. It is an active volcano and this picture was was taken from the rim of the caldera which was formed around 25,00 years ago. The present cone rises some 700m above Lake Batur which has formed on the caldera floor. The last major lava flows were in 1968 and can be seen clearly as dark basaltic out purings out from the main cone but the volcano urmbles and emits steam regularly. It looks and sounds remote but there are literally hundereds of restaurants and tea houses stretched along this, the southwest part of the rim forming part of the town of Kintamani.
Nearby is a Volcano Museum which wasn't there last time we visited and contains some great models and geological samples. My eldest (7), who's totally into seismographs at the moment (even more so after watching 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' twice on the plane on the way over...) thought it fantastic. We found a little staircase in one corner of the museum labelled 'Observation Room'. We ascended the stairs to find a little bright room with several tripods with high powered binoculars pointing vaguely at the volcano. The tripod mounts are very wobbly and the scopes could not be focussed ... oh well. On the way back down we stopped at a little glass door where we found the resident seismologist who seemed completely chuffed to have some interested visitors. He welcomed us in and showed us the seismograph which had a trace on its drum from a tremor that morning. Mr 7 was in heaven!
Of course my oculus came to Bali with me and although it stayed in my camera bag most of the time ... it came out whenever I remembered it was there ... like this occasion. Shot using my favourite lens my Nikkor 50mm f/1.4.
Fade
Fade I had no words today I thought to set words to this image to say what I thought when I created it or it created me ... I never can tell then I realised I remember standing there ... holding the trigger the roar of the ocean the bright dawn light I recall the click of the exposure ending after, I guess, the minutes I asked for that in between I went somewhere to where I do not know but it was peaceful there were no words
Walking A Different Path
Walking a different path. Travel ... one of the best things we can do for both ourselves and our children. As a family we travelled ... a lot. I changed schools every two or three years and after a while you make friends like a traveller makes friends ... knowing that it's a temporary thing ... one or other of you will be gone soon. You don't put down roots, they'll only be torn up in a couple of years. You learn to be compact and self-reliant. On the other hand you get to see things other people do not. Countries that no longer exist. Ways of life that have disappeared forever. I remember seeing Chinese junks in Penang and Singapore harbours. Orchard Road with wooden shops before it became high-rise. Islands before they became the footprint for mega-resorts. It wasn't that long ago either.
I remember returning to Australia, to a new school again after one of these trips and finding people simply didn't believe that I'd been overseas ... that I was making it all up ... that everywhere was simply the same as it was here. How I longed to be able to teleport them to walk along one of those streets, or to the center of an asian market where you chose the chicken you wanted for dinner, went away and returned to find it newly converted into fresh-plucked chicken ... still vitally warm ... or you could stay and watch. That would learn them ... maybe.
I believe it's vitally important to walk down another street. A place you've never been ... surrounded by people living a life completely different to yours (albeit superficially ... I mean we're all essentially looking for love and warmth and food) to see how people live. It changes the way you view the world and your place within it ... at times if only to realise just how lucky you are to have the things you have and often take for granted.
I took the picture above on a recent family trip to Ubud in Bali. I liked that it showed that essential nature of travel ... walking a different path.
Do you travel? Have you walked another path?
Sum of the Parts
Sum of the Parts
Ocean swells and falls as a twilight breeze ruffles my hair
salty fresh with spray
waves thumping deeply through bedrock
Watching the moon rise
and waiting
Alone now
Then it happens ... the scene blurs and folds
into two ... then three
Ocean Sky Moon
as balanced as they are suspended
Individually separate
As the sum of the parts
they are the world
(Inspired by Ness 2012)
I have been working on a series lately called 'Sum of the Parts' in which I deliberately blur my photograph in an attempt to break it into it's component parts. The pieces invite the viewer to to meditate on a scene without visual distraction of detail in a realm without time. That's the theory anyways! The first image in this series was blogged here as Sunset Wave and is shown below.
Tell me, do you work in or on a series? By that I mean do you think "today I'm going to take a picture for my *insert classy description here* series"? Or do you look back on your portfolio and think "Hey I've got a lot pictures of flowers/car number plates/left shoes ... I should put them together in a series"?
Do tell! :-)
Fernland
Fernland
Damp, earthy - a faint musk
Cool, verdant
quiet ... still
Fractal patterns stretch
Unfolding gently, chaos becomes ordinary
repeated
and repeated
and repeated - seeming endlessly
easy to dismiss, to overlook as all alike
they're copies to a point
each unique - new and ancient both
Reaching for the light
As I to you
unfurling in hope that the light will come
Do you see me here in the fernland?
beneath the trees
striving for the dappled
When I find it I thrive
Without it a piece of me dies
(June 2012)
----
I'm not a religious person, let me just state that up front. Sometimes when I look over what I've written, I can see how some of the writing could be viewed that way ... all this striving and longing for light stuff. What I am striving for is a completeness that I don't find in my day-to-day life. A feeling that I glimpse every now and again of a natural patterning (and I emphatically do not refer to design) at once simple and mind-bendingly complex. I see it in the sky, in the forming of clouds or the way light refracts through a freshly rained droplet. Or in this case the fiddle-head of a fernlet reaching through the dark. I see them as beautiful but I also have the rationality to know that it's me who's labeling them that way. That they, in all likelihood would exist and go on without my observations ... or would they? Sounds like a discussion over a glass of wine (or three)! Anyways, enough rambling. Enjoy!
Autumnal Fire
Canberra has had one of the most spectacular autumn displays in years. A combination of the drought breaking last year and a very mild, wet summer. The oaks and maples are still running yellows but the main show met the icy winter blasts that heralded the beginning of winter's grip ... great cold fronts dragging up air from the antarctic. Where there were streets transformed into riotous displays of colour, trees now reach for the sky with branches bare save a few hardy splashes of colour clinging on.
The first picture was taken of a golden ash in full flight using a Lensbaby 3G ... a quirky little lens that can produce outstanding results. The second picture, below, is the back deck after a recent rainshower. You could likely guess what kind of trees we have in the back yard...
For a lot of you it will be late spring or early summer. Canberra, although known as the 'Bush Capital', has many exotic tree species and plantings ... which I find kind of nice as the Euclaypts, being evergreen, aren't renowned for their spectacular seasonal shows. Autumn in Canberra is gorgeous. Do you have native flora where you live? A mix? Is the landscape around you so modified by people as to form a new kind of 'natural' or native?