Time for a challenge. Whenever we get too comfortable in life we are no longer growing – and I feel the need to push my photography skills forward. The guidelines of this self imposed journey are: one photo a week; no explanations or stories needed; black and white; shot only with my Nikon D800 and 28mm lens.
Time for a challenge. Whenever we get too comfortable in life we are no longer growing – and I feel the need to push my photography skills forward. The guidelines of this self imposed journey are: one photo a week; no explanations or stories needed; black and white; shot only with my Nikon D800 and 28mm lens. The end. Or, the beginning …
“We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. We’re willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.”
~Pema Chodron~
“Don’t forget that the land is always out there, making its way, doing everything it can so you can breathe fresh air; so you can eat fresh food; so you can move and see and feel and think, and it’s on your side. The world is out there doing what it’s been doing way before you came here, it’s firm and strong and it takes a lot to bring it down.
So from time to time, just go outside and look at this spectacle. This pure painting right in front of your eyes. No one created it. No one owns it. It doesn’t want anything. It doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone. It simply is.
So maybe, try a little tenderness. Just give it a chance to do what it can do. Just let it help you
breathe
and eat
and move
and see
and maybe just try to live your life in a way that doesn’t kill this force of nature
that is just trying to give you a world worth living in. A clean world. A fresh world.
Paths, forests, oceans, animals, oxygen, water. That’s all it takes.
Just try a little tenderness towards this world we’ve been lucky enough to build our homes on.
If you take care of it, it will take care of you.”
[Charlotte Eriksson]
“I prefer winter and fall, when you can feel the bone structure in the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” [Andrew Wyeth]
The fist time I visited Zion and Arches National Parks in Utah was in 1994. The colors of the landscape were so rich and vibrant and the landscape so rugged – unlike anything I was used to seeing daily – that I felt like I’d stepped into a cartoon. It all seemed so unreal. Even back then there was a small part of me that wanted to be a photographer – I just had never known anyone who’d followed an artistic path so it didn’t even occur to me to explore that quiet voice. I’m so grateful that I made the decision to take a risk in 2010 to travel again and just see if there was something to that longing.
Zion National Park, Utah … 2010
Is there a recurring theme or interest in your life? Something that keeps showing up and asking you to invest a little more time into it? I say go on the adventure. One of the lessons I’ve learned about the creative journey is to let go of attachment to outcome. If something wants to be expressed through you then partner up with it and see what happens – – without getting hung up on needing to be good enough, or validated or even talented. Go on the journey to see what it can teach you about yourself and what light it might offer to the world.
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
[ Attributed to Anais Nin though she did not take original credit ]
Pemaquid Point, Maine … 2011
I got “lost” several times while exploring back roads in Montana. As lost as an adventurer without a map or a plan can be. I’ve always been attracted to moody landscapes and love the mystery of a foggy morning more than a perfectly bright and cheery one. This particular day brought me to a ghostly forest – there was a dance going on between all the trees that had been lost in a fire, the lucky ones that survived it and the new life trying to emerge.
Ghostly forest in Montana – 2010. Double exposure.
Doesn’t life feel that way at times? We wrestle with ghosts from our past, even when we think we’ve moved on from them. Some hold on and try to choke out the new life we are trying to forge – casting shadows where there could be light. Yet some how a new seed takes hold, grows some roots and flourishes despite the challenges. There is always hope and nature mirrors that for us repeatedly.
