A Walk With Light

Fitting in, living in it

2011-07-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

"The environment is not tailored to man; it is itself, for itself. All its creatures fit in. They know how, from ages past. Man fits in or fights it. Fitting in, living in it, carries challenge, exhilaration, and peace."

- Margaret E Murie

All there is... reflected through his eyes,

2011-05-04T17:30:00.000-07:00

"There is a brief moment when all there is in a man's mind and soul and spirit is reflected through his eyes, his hands, his attitude. This is the moment to record."

-- Yousuf Karsh

Place

2011-04-19T13:04:00.000-07:00

From The River of No Return: Remembering the Mississippi

Liquid Light

2011-02-09T17:41:00.000-08:00

Weather in the southeast US has forced shifts in travel plan, meaning more editing time. Fingering through hundreds of images sheds new thoughts on creations weeks and months past. Three months ago I was standing in the humid morning Light; A beach on the Caribbean shore of Costa Rica. No image obligations, just sand, surf and shorebirds to play with.

Light merged with liquid, pouring over sand, cresting off surf, illuminating sea, silhouetting sandpipers. Light casting a monochrome brassy-gold glaze over all it touched.

The morning was like being a guardian of the moment, less about creating, instead more about recognizing what was. It is the hardest and simplest of photography. It requires stepping out of the way. Trusting the eyes. Letting the Light speak, letting it shine in.

Monochrome Sunday

2011-02-07T15:58:00.000-08:00

Mood, some days it is the Light that creates it, some days it is the mood that creates the Light.

Sunday, birding with Jenn in Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge mood created the impression; still, curiously quiet, muted, monochromatic.

I created but one image all day, a fraction of the norm, but only one whispered, caught my eyes.

End of the Land, Edge of the Shining Sea

2011-01-14T15:36:00.000-08:00

The Light shines from above, spilling onto the land, and the sea. Few of us ever see Light from whence it comes, only where it spills, reflects, illuminates. Aloft the world is transformed by that Light.

Of late I have been floating on gossamer wings, staring down from the sky with the Light, on the thin horizon at the end of the land, edge of the shining sea.

Thank you Tom Hutchings for giving me this gift - I am eternally grateful.

Last Light of the Year

2011-01-01T12:21:00.000-08:00

Light fades in falling hue,

Tonight tomorrow rests,

Lingering on new wings to fly,

The palette clean, an empty sky.

It was only fitting that the last Light I would see in the passing year be the alpine glow melting away across the bayou of southwest Louisiana. After spending so much of the past six months photographing there, a clear, cloudless evening was the purity I needed to begin thinking about a New Year, new hopes for this terrorized landscape and remember, how serenely beautiful is this wetscape and sky.

Light Flight Magic

2010-10-19T14:06:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-26T18:30:00.001-07:00

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

2010-09-16T18:57:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-27T12:54:00.000-07:00

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"

2010-06-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

"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"

2010-06-16T14:56:00.000-07:00

"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

2010-05-10T11:42:00.000-07:00

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

2010-02-11T10:12:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-19T11:14:00.001-08:00

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.

Pause

2009-12-28T17:23:00.000-08:00

“I’d rather see a mediocre photograph that makes me feel something than a perfect photograph that makes me feel nothing,”

- Jim Estrin, New York Times photojournalist/teacher.

I'm passionate about watching birds, I'm not a "ticker", I'm horrible at conserving details, maybe because details kept are far less engaging than details experienced. In fact, that often reveals details are the experience. Looking deep within often enables me to see far beyond. Droplet convexes, feather prisms, scale reflections, leaf translucency, a world of Light between, below and beyond, each rewarding a future creation, but so easily missed in a casual glance.

Birds are everywhere, and cause me to pause.

53 Years of Learning to Learn

2009-12-25T17:43:00.000-08:00

p.s. The simplest things in the world take us the furthest distances.

Today is my birthday, my half-way point. My compass swings round 180.
Je suis encore béni avec un sens d'aventure.

2009-11-16T17:22:00.001-08:00

I've recently returned from Washington DC and the late autumn countryside west up the Potomac River, into West Virginia. Changing environments for the eyes is like being a kid and opening a new box of crayolas - the eyes dance, I feel their excitement, they flit about every new scene, they are almost exhaustingly alive.

Peak fall color was two to three weeks ago. The countryside is now quiet, windshield travelers all back to the city. I can walk sections of the Appalachian trail without a single human interruption, save my own thoughts. Light is also quiet - Light without direction, from every direction. A walk in the forest is a muted journey from the rust and sable and Dijon end of the crayola pack - silhouettes cast against seamless sky.

My walk feels like that of a small child with his first bike and training wheels; it is a new approaching winter for me, for my eyes, I usually flee the cold, the damp, the lifeless, in winter, this time I'm staying, I'm wobbling and learning to pedal in a new Light.

Liguid Light

2009-10-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

A few days ago fall shifted gears, cool dampness replaced crisp sun, and then the final act began, rain returned.

In that window between the two, when the season tide within fall runs slack, there is a chance to see the world differently here. Every deciduous tree and shrub is cast in autumnal hues - their time is measured by the rains - and that clock decides how the colors will pass -

some melt,
some run,
some freeze for a fleeting moment, like an exhalant breath of summer.

This year the rains began in the day, there was Light to show the way and color to paint the path.

The Light of stars

2009-09-22T13:04:00.000-07:00

How does one express the Light from stars? Insipid flecks of hydrogen gas burning bright beyond our dreams.

Riding my bike the other day, lovely warm last day of summer sun flooding down on me, a quiet country road open and empty, inviting wandering thoughts, I thought about Light, the gift of a star.

Earth is of that energy, that Light, to its very core. Deep inside burns all the stuff of stars. Eventually it too needs to be release back into the grand vastness of space.

The forests around me were lit with big leaf maple leaves soaking and radiating Light, giving it back to my eyes as much as fueling the factory of photosynthesis - "Lightwork" if you will.

I thought about this Light, hidden Light, unexpected Light?

I rode further and thought of this image from Lake Natron, in the Great Rift Valley of Tanzania. The bottom of Natron is volcanic rock, where soda minerals meet and dissolve into water. The surface of Natron is under the intense and ever bearing Light of our star - water evaporates at a rate of up to 1,500mm each year, quadruple the replenishing rains. Soda concentrates on Natron's skin and a network of cracks consume the surface. As if Light were releasing skyward.

On Inspiration

2009-09-09T14:30:00.000-07:00

"I don't want to declare there are no highways of fruitful directions. In learning there are. Follow them, use them and forget them. Don't park. Highways will get you there, but I tell you, don't ever try to arrive. Arrival is the death of inspiration."
~ Ernst Hass

Walking back, looking forward

2009-09-05T13:24:00.001-07:00

Over the past several days, while a bit under-the-weather, sequestered from the world, I have begun my walking with Light, but have begun the journey trying to see more clearly the path I have traveled thus far. Much more than just reviewing my images, I'm extracting from old personal journals and trying to re-experience the events, moments and emotions surrounding portfolios, essays and individual creations. It's an initially daunting journey - I've created well over a hundred thousand edited images - yet it may be the only first walk possible and in the end most critical.

Beginnings

2009-08-31T18:54:00.000-07:00

This project, A walk with Light, is in its infancy, embryonic is perhaps more accurate, other than it has been germinating for most of my life. So why now? It was inspired by a number of events and perambulations, but one in particular gave it life, below from a blog entry called Falling Light:

"When I was very young in my to-be-a-photographer journey my friend Ernst Haas had a stuccatoed monologue with me one afternoon, what I wrote down from it later was - 'Go for a walk one day with the light, you will come back changed'".