“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.
In 2010 I was laid off from a job that never really suited me. My boss, the CFO of the company, told me that he respectfully hoped I’d never get another office job again. Not because I hadn’t done my job well – but rather because he felt that I was built for more creative endeavors. He knew that my spirit was being squashed sitting for 8 hours a day in my cubicle, beneath fluorescent lights that gave me headaches.
I’d felt my own nudge from spirit – through prayer and meditation – to once again in my life – take the road less traveled. His words validated what I’d already been feeling. So a few months later I hit the road. With nothing more than a few dollars in my pocket, a belief that things always worked out and a sense of adventure, I spent several months exploring our country and teaching myself photography along the way.
I’d tucked most of those images away. Chalking them up to some of the [really bad] 10,000 photos one is supposed to make before even thinking that they have any idea about this craft. Lately I’ve been peeking through a few and thought I’d start sharing them. Not because they are spectacular shots – but because they are a part of my journey.
So here I give you a scene from Sandusky, Ohio in 2010. I love old buildings. Their layers of color, texture, cracked and peeling paint … remind me of my favorite types of people. Messy on the exterior but filled with stories, character and depth.
Today was fun! There was a photo class all about the Cyanotype process at PhotoSynthesis in Manchester. If you haven’t gone there – go check it out. Chris – the owner – is all about old photographic processes and has a ridiculous amount of knowledge to share.
Chris checking my exposure time. The negative is being exposed under UV light onto the chemical coated paper.
Taking its water bath. This will wash out those yellow and green tones.
After the water, the image takes a bath in a hydrogen peroxide mixture which helps you see what it will look like once it dries and oxidizes.
What I loved about learning the Cyanotype process is that with just a few needed items it can be done from home. Basically – you combine two different chemicals with water, coat your paper with them [to make them light-sensitive], expose them to UV light, rinse them off, tone them if you’d like … and then let them dry.
Again – checking exposure. This one came out kind of funky because I tried to expose it to a board that was already prepared for the encaustic medium, which I plan to put over the image.
The chemicals didn’t want to stick to the encaustic medium …
The final image was really washed out – but I think it has some potential once I tinker with it more.
The challenge lies in the trial and error and I can’t imagine you could ever reproduce the same image twice. Due to all the variables based on things like: what kind of negative you choose to expose – i.e. in converting a digital image to a negative there’s all kinds of choices with how you convert it to black and white and what types of curves you apply – the type of paper or even wood you use; the amount of time you let it sit under UV light, etc … it’s kind of a game of chance. I created three widely different prints all with the same negative … and wound up only liking one of them.
Some of our work hanging in the darkroom. We got such a wide range of finished prodcuts. One woman worked with only infared negatives and the cloud detail she got was pretty cool.
Though I’ve primarily really only ever been a digital photographer – I am so much more inspired by this old process. There is something about getting your hands dirty and seeing how everything can change just by immersing it in water that energizes me more than taking 100 quick photos and storing them on my hard drive.
This is one of the ones I did three times. We had to go back in and give my original negative less contrast to get any sort of detail to show up. This still needs tweaking but was the best of the lot.
I’m excited to take this knowledge and combine it with the work I’ve been doing with the Encaustic Medium – another art form that lets me make a big mess and create one of a kind images. What sorts of new things have you been playing with lately?
I exposed this one outside – rather than under the UV lights. It started raining in the process and you can see where the raindrops hit the glass and caused some cloudiness.
