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.

Pause

“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

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.

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

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

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.