Light Flight Magic

It's hard to convey the sheer joy I have in looking at this image. Not because I created it, because a magical marriage of Light and flight created it.

In the long night of editing Gulf images I came upon this one, #5678. A number. But instantly it was so much more. Magic had happened. Weeks ago, in a place far away from now. A moment so quick I had only time to react and instantly move on. Somewhere between eye and brain it registered for that fleeting fraction and then released so the next moment could be realized, and then the next, and the next, and so on. Photography is like that more than not.

Feathers are in many ways natures gift to Light, nearly perfect in their embrace of one another. Easy to see in a peacock or Quetzal feather, but no less elegant and exquisite in less flashy form, like the under-wing of a Brown Pelican in flight. Maybe more so without distraction.

It's one of my loves about photography and Light - that embrace of moments fleeting or unseen - Light flight magic.

Last night I stared at the screen for an eternity soaking in every texture and sculpture revealed through shadow and Light. I stared as though it might fly away. As if moving on with the editing would permanently release the magic. This morning the first thing I did after turning on the computer was to check, it was still there, the magic was real.

Last Light

Last Light,

Fading through black pine,

Falls on bamboo.

Back home in Portland and the Fall has drifted over the Northwest while I was away - the colors have not shifted, but the season has. Light is low, and warm, and gentle. There is no rush to it's traverse.

Bayou Giverny

Once in a great while I happen into a place where I'm overwhelmed by a feeling of something that has gone before me. I feel the Light as if seen before. The Light whispers. And I just raise the camera and do as my soul tells me and in turn is being told - This is not the time to think, analyze, contemplate. This is the time to do as the Light inspires my soul.

Beyond the Disaster

Over the past few weeks I have been scuttling forth and back along America's Gulf Coast documenting the aftermath of the greatest human-caused disaster so far on Earth. Between the frustrations and the ugliness of crude oil spewed into the coastal environment there were moments of beauty that transported me to kinder moments on Earth. These two images are apair that sang to me - of the sea and the lure that draws every human soul down to the shore.

"Color is joy"

"Color is joy. One does not think joy. One is carried by it. Learn by doing or even better unlearn by doing. The opposite of what you learned. The paradoxical fact in the aesthetic is that theories also true in reverse."

- Ernst Haas

"for lack of elemental things"

"The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. In my world of beach and june these elemental presences lived and had their being..."

— Henry Beston
(The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod)

Messieur Silhouette

Light often falls on its beginnings; sometime we have to go in search of that place - and know it when we arrive.

I love the way Light reveals other world, draws distinction, renders a clarity otherwise eluded.

I saw a reverse forest silhouette while hiking, a few years before I discovered the camera, I have never forgotten that image and have been searching for its essence for more than three decades. From time to time, I walk again in the woods, or in a market, or in this case a Paris shoe shop, and whispers of that long ago image tickle my thoughts, my eyes search, it's their hiding in plain sight.

To be in Paris and struck by a silhouette made me smile. Drawn from the name of Messieur Étienne de Silhouette, the notoriously cheap Controller-General of French king Louis XV, the word refers to a cheap form of portraiture, mocking the parsimonious Étienne de Silhouette. But ironically the most perfectly executed silhouettes are capture a beauty rarely otherwise seen.

Light Inspired

Just back from India, still unpacking bags and cameras, but took a break to see what I saw. Taking the trek through 1,500 images, many of things required, a few others of things inspired. The photo above was the confluence of my passion for the bike, the texture and wear that is Kolkata street life and that lovely Light that graces this city of crowds, cacophony and chaos every afternoon about 4pm in the dry season. The Light becomes like cream pouring into every seam, wrapping itself about every surface like a creature exploring life for the first time. I watched Light move with a quiet smile on my face, like watching a dear friend run her finger over the world after a long sleep.

Light Strokes with New Brushes

The past few weeks have been spent learning how to see Light, talk to Light, interpret Light, through new cameras and lenses. It is a new year, it was time to turn my attention towards new tools, new brushes if you will. It's been the better part of a decade since I embraced so many new pieces of equipment - and now all digital - overwhelmingly boundless and exciting as I learn the possibilities.

In two days I leave for India, Kolkata first--the color and magic of a dear friend's wedding, the chaos of streets alive, the intensity that permeates the Ganges Delta, then north to Assam--wedding part deux and a visit with tiger friends in and around Kaziranga National Park. My eyes are incredibly excited!

The trip is a mixed adventure - a set focus in Kaziranga, a bit of my old self, but through new eyes and an untainted palette during days in Kolkata. On both voyages my eyes are incredibly excited! But I must admit it is the unrestricted perambulations the days in Kolkata I am looking forward to most - it feels the most foreign. Despite this being my fifth trip to India, it feels like my first with just enough experience to move comfortably, consciously - Light being my only guide.