Category: Up Close

friday’s frozen kisses

0 degrees Fahrenheit

“Photography is about sustaining a creative continuum until you create a visual orgasm, suspended in Time for eternal ecstasy. What you see forever may only occur for a fraction of a second and only occurs once. I have tried to re-create photographs – you can’t. Better or worse, yes – but the same, no! Nothing in this Life is ever the same twice. You might THINK it is, but you just aren’t looking closely enough.” — James Elliott, from his essay on Kiss On Frosted Glass

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Leica R8/DMR, 100 Apo Macro Elmarit

the chase

we all chase something
choosing what, when and where to chase
makes all difference

May we chase and capture that which makes a positive difference in the world in 2010.

“The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don’t know what to do with it.” — Edward Weston

“This is where the artist comes in, arranging in a frame the scattered elements into a story, anticipating and chasing the light, bringing it all together to create an evocative image capable of communicating the visual experience… . — Guy Tal

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Leica R8/DMR, 100mm Apo Macro Elmarit

Last week visualized

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the fall leaves continue to fascinate both eye
and mind (as metaphor for life’s cycles)
(R8/DMR with 60mm Macro Elmarit)

Gazing up while waiting for malts with Sophia
(M8 with 28mm Summicron)

holiday remnants seen while waiting for David

along with a striking SUV interior

and finally a delightful David

a stroll about Virmond park
(with R8/DMR and 350mm Telyt)

after a day’s work – young men park the landscape truck – for a bit of ball

and found myself mesmerized by wind, waves and birds

porch sitting- mesmerized by the light

aware, motivated, yearning, reaching

“Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it. In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe.” – Ruth Bernhard

within the process
changing before our eyes, see
us in this mirror

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Leica M8, Visoflex III, 135 Elmar

“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind”

returning (always) to the study of wabi sabi
wherein
the student perceives beauty
in the
ephemeral, transient, isolated, simple, subdued tranquil, natural, intimate, eternal, melancholic, asymmetrical, earthy, organic, rough, uneven, asperities, spacious, humble, sober, intangible yearning, impermanent, passage of time…

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Leica R8/DMR, 60 mm Macro Elmarit

Meditation — contemplate impermanence

Photographer, Richard Avedon, said, “I think all art is about control – the encounter between control and the uncontrollable.” In my experience we have much less control than we often believe. Change and impermanence rule — that thought — that feeling — that observation — try and hold one of them for even a moment. Memory distorts and fades. We photograph. We write, draw, paint, sculpt — none of these expressions end up quite as we “thought, saw or observed.” We, and our thoughts, all fade away as flowers in the fall; leaving meager evidence of our former states of consciousness. Deeply meditating on this cosmic joke brings a peaceful smile to our busy-ness. Best enjoy the ravishing, uncontrollable beauty as it visits.

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Leica M8, 50 mm Summilux Asph